TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY: Dr JIM BROWNE, President of NUI Galway on 6 June, 2008, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, on PATRICK FOTTRELL

A Leas-Sheansailéir agus a Uachtaráin, a chomhghleacaithe, a aíonna agus a dhaoine uaisle, ba mhaith liom a rá ar dtús gur mór an onóir domsa an deis seo a bheith agam an cur i láthair seo a chur ós bhur gcomhair. Duine den chéad scoth é An Dochtúir Pat  Fottrell agus níl aon dabht ná go bhfuil an céim oinigh seo tuilte go maith aige.

Dr Pat Fottrell, a native of Youghal, graduated with the degrees of B.Sc. and M.Sc. from University College Cork and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow.  While in Glasgow he worked with Professor John Paul, the founder of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research and a role model for the physician/scientist we are now trying to develop in Ireland.

Pat was awarded the degree of DSc for published work by the National University of Ireland in 1975 and over the years has been the recipient of a number of important and prestigious academic awards including:

• A Beit Memorial Fellowship at the University of Glasgow
• A Fogarty International Fellowship at Harvard University
• Several Visiting Fellowships at Harvard University
• The Conway Medal presented by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland
• Elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy

Pat has a tremendous record of achievement and innovation across a range of activities including teaching and research, the commercialization of research, university management and leadership and the development and implementation of public policy.

He was in turn, Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and Established Professor of Biochemistry in NUI Galway.  In that role he established successful research programmes in coeliac disease (funded by the Wellcome Trust), female infertility, and osteoporosis in collaboration with Harvard University in the United States.  The results of his research were presented in over 120 research publications and 4 books.  Under his research leadership, NUI Galway developed a widely recognised expertise in rapid diagnostic technology, which in turn led to the creation of one of the very first campus companies, Noctech, which later became Cambridge Diagnostics.  All of this was accomplished in the 1970's and 1980's when research funding was extremely scarce, a  minority of academic staff were involved in industry-relevant research and the concept of campus companies was very new.

Pat Fottrell was elected Registrar and Deputy President of NUI Galway in 1986 and served with distinction in that role until 1991.  In 1996 he was elected President of NUI Galway by the Senate of the NUI, having being the preferred candidate following a series of staff consultations in Galway.  Indeed he was the last elected President of an NUI University.

As President, he led NUI Galway through a period of major change.  His leadership style, in particular his clarity of vision, his energy, his determination and his firm but collegiate approach facilitated significant change and development in the University.   Pat's approach was to effect change in a quiet but very effective way.

Under his innovative and energetic direction, NUI Galway developed it's first strategic plan, defined and agreed its research priorities, created major research institutes including the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science and the Irish Centre for Human Rights, increased student intake by over 30% and developed ab initio a robust quality assurance system.  

It is very widely recognised, inside and outside the University that decisions made and implemented by him during his Presidency are the basis of NUI Galway's success in recent years.

Ta sé fíor bháúil don Ghaeilge agus mar Uachtarán na hOllscoile thug sé tacaíocht mhór don Ghaeilge. Chuir sé acmhainní ar fáil chun teagaisc agus taighde trí Ghaeilge a fhorbairt san Ollscoil féin agus taobh amuigh den Ollscoil in áiteanna mar an Cheathrú Rua agus Carna.

As President of NUI Galway, Pat contributed significantly to the Conference of Heads of Irish Universities, now the Irish Universities Association.  In particular he made significant inputs to the development of the 1997 Universities Act and to the evolution of the National University of Ireland, following on from that Act.

Since retiring from the Presidency of NUI Galway, and frankly I am not sure retiring is a word I should us in respect of Pat Fottrell, Pat has taken on a number of significant and high profile appointments.  He served for three years as Chair of the Governing Body of the Dublin Institute of Technology and led the development of a strategy to acquire and develop the new DIT campus at Grangegorman.  He chaired the national forum on the Flouridation of Public Water and the recommendation of that group has been implemented by Government.  He was invited by the Royal Irish Academy to chair the first Irish Council for Bioethics, and as Chair established the strategy and ground rules for the Council and recruited its first Director.  He chaired the Ireland-USA Fulbright Commission, led the development of its strategic plan and recruited its first Director.  He chaired the national group on Medical Education, whose recommendation on increasing entry into undergraduate medicine, initiating graduate entry medical education in Ireland and updating entry systems to medical school, are now being implemented and are transforming medical education in Ireland.

Given his record of achievement in scientific research and academic leadership, it was no surprise that Pat Fottrell was invited to Chair the Board of Science Foundation Ireland, or SFI.  Under his leadership SFI has allocated almost 1 billion Euros of research funding and has created a series of innovative competitive peer-reviewed programmes to support the highest quality research in Universities and to develop productive partnerships between University and industry-based researchers.  

It is very widely recognised that the work of SFI is absolutely critical to the future economic success of Ireland and the fact that Pat Fottrell has been entrusted by Government with the Chairmanship of that important body indicates clearly the esteem and high regard in which he is held.

Pat also serves on the Board of Teagasc and chairs its Research Committee; he is a member of the Board of Curators and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland and of the Galway Hospice Foundation.

In his free time Pat enjoys sport and from an early age was a keen soccer player and supporter. While a student there, he captained the UCC Soccer Club and was selected for the Irish Universities Soccer Team. Later he played for the University of Glasgow and has been a supporter of Glasgow Celtic since his student days in Glasgow.  Recently he has accepted an invitation from the Football Association of Ireland to chair a North - South Committee for the Development of Soccer in Universities and Colleges on the island of Ireland.

Pat's record of achievement over a very long and distinguished career is, I am sure you will agree, very impressive.  They say that behind every great man there is an even greater woman. Pat has been blessed with Esther and their fine family of 4 children, Caitriona, Deirdre, Conor and Stephen.

Vice-Chancellor, it is entirely appropriate that the National University of Ireland, in this its centenary year, should honour Pat Fottrell. Over a long and very distinguished career, he has brought honour to UCC, to NUI Galway and to the National University of Ireland, and indeed was the last person to be appointed President of an NUI University by the Senate of the NUI. Nobody better embodies the spirit and the achievement of National University of Ireland.

A Leas-Sheansailéir, fear den chéad scoth é Pat Fottrell agus ar bhealaí éagsúla, is fíor a rá nach mbeidh a leithéid arís ann.
Praehonorabilis Vice-Cancellarie, totaque universitas.
Presento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in Scientiae, idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.

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TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY: PROFESSOR DAVIS COAKLEY, Professor of Medical Gerontology, Trinity College, Dublin on 6 June, 2008, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Medicine, honoris causa, on MICHAEL HYLAND

It was William Osler, the great North American physician, who said to his students "medicine is not a trade, it is a mission."  We only need to look back through medical history to find individuals who have dedicated their lives to seeking cures for disease or to discovering new approaches to the sociomedical issues of their time. With pioneering vision, Dr. Michael Hyland, has devoted his life to establishing a new approach to the health and well-being of older people.  

Michael Hyland was born in Yorkshire in 1934.  His father Edmond was a Corkman who grew up on College Road just a short distance from UCC, where he studied medicine, graduating in the early twenties. After graduation, his father sought a position in England, like most UCC graduates of the time, and he set up a practice in Yorkshire.  Michael's mother Mary was also from Cork, growing up on a farm on Blarney Road.   Michael's parents maintained strong links with their Irish roots spending their holidays every year with their three children in Ballycotton and Michael has fond memories of these carefree days.   The family was on holidays as usual in Ballycotton when the Second World War began.  Michael's parents decided to leave their children with their grandmother on the farm on Blarney Road.  Michael was sent to school at the Christian Brothers College, or 'Christians' as it is more familiarly known.  After the war, the children returned with their parents to Yorkshire.

The family moved back to Ireland in 1947 and settled on Orchard Road.  In 1951, Michael followed his father's footsteps by choosing to study medicine at UCC.  After graduation, he interned at the North Infirmary and stayed on subsequently as senior house officer and registrar.  He was unsure about his future career, so in 1961 he decided to do some locums as a general practitioner in Yorkshire.

It was during this period that he became aware of the ground-breaking approach to the medical care of older people being brought about by the new specialty of geriatric medicine. The specialty developed from the pioneering work of Dr. Marjorie Warren at the West Middlesex Hospital in London.  Michael began his training in geriatric medicine in the Central Middlesex Hospital where he came under the influence of the charismatic Dr. (later Professor) Gordon Mills.  After four years, Michael moved to the West Middlesex Hospital where he worked with Dr. Jimmy Andrews, another well known advocate of the specialty.

Professor Denis O'Sullivan was appointed to the chair of medicine in UCC in 1961. He recognised the importance of developing a specialised service for older patients and asked Dr J H Sheldon, whose book on the social medicine of old age was of fundamental importance, to advise on the care of the elderly in Munster. This eventually resulted in the first advertisement for a geriatrician in this country. Michael was appointed to the position and commenced duty in January 1969.

Three months after taking up the appointment, Michael married Rosaleen Crowley whom he had met at the Central Middlesex Hospital where she was nursing.  Rosaleen had a similar background to Michael's.  Her father Dr. Patrick Crowley had graduated in medicine from UCC in the 1920s and was Medical Officer of Health in Tunbridge Wells in Kent.
 
At St. Finbarr's Hospital, Michael gradually built up a multidisciplinary team and in 1972 he appointed his first registrar, Dr. (now Professor) Cillian Twomey.  Shortly afterwards, Michael opened his first day hospital and he managed to persuade the Department of Health to build a new 80 bed rehabilitation unit in St. Finbarr's Hospital. When the new Regional Hospital opened in 1978, it included an acute admission ward for older patients.  One might ask, how did Michael achieve so much so quickly?  He has ability obviously, but he also has an open and genial personality which, combined with his sense of humour, managed to open doors which others would find firmly closed.

Michael was appointed lecturer and examiner at UCC soon after he returned to Cork. He was a remarkable teacher and he set time aside to teach each morning.  His clinics were some of the best attended in the medical school.  Michael became a role model for many of the students and junior doctors in Cork. Most of these went into fields other than geriatric medicine but they are quick to acknowledge Michael's influence on them.

Michael Hyland is a gifted clinician and his knowledge of medicine is extremely broad. He has always kept himself at the cutting edge of developments and patients under his care were guaranteed to get the best of diagnostics and the best therapy available.

Several young doctors who trained in Cork were attracted to the specialty of geriatric medicine because of Michael's enthusiasm and dedication. Most have gone on to hold consultant posts in Ireland, North America, the United Kingdom and Australia. It is significant that four of the professors of geriatric medicine in this country were inspired by Michael to follow careers in the specialty and three of them worked with Michael as young doctors and were also his students.  Michael, who is widely regarded as the pioneer of the specialty in Ireland,  gave generously of his time to developing services for the elderly on a national level. Towards this end, he played a key role in several national societies and working groups. One of the latter produced a seminal report entitled 'The Years Ahead' in 1989. It is still regarded as the most comprehensive review of services for older people in Ireland.  

The famous 17th century physician, William Harvey, complained in his day that few men above the age of forty seemed able to accept his discovery of the circulation of the blood because they had already closed their minds to new ideas.  This certainly cannot be said of Michael who remains a perpetual student, always open to new ideas, absorbing them into his clinical practice when relevant and sharing them with his students and staff.  After retirement he continued bedside teaching until his 70th birthday and over the past ten years he has been chairman of the Clinical Research Ethics Committee of the Cork Teaching Hospitals.  This is an onerous task and his appointment is a reflection of his energy and integrity.    

Michael encouraged young doctors on his team to become involved in research and many projects initiated in this way were subsequently published in peer reviewed journals.  In 1997, he played a key role in a large clinical trial being undertaken by researchers in three universities, the university of Leiden, the university of Glasgow and UCC.  The trial demonstrated that elderly individuals at risk of vascular disease benefitted from treatment with statins and these findings were published in the Lancet in 2002.

Michael was one of the early members of the British Geriatrics Society, which was the first society for ageing in the world for consultants in this field and which has developed into a large international society. The society held its spring meeting in Cork in 1999 and Michael was awarded the President's Medal of the Society. This medal is awarded in recognition of outstanding service to geriatric medicine.

Michael retired in 1998 leaving a thriving department with five consultants on its staff.  He is very highly regarded not only in Ireland but also internationally. Yet he never speaks of his own achievements or successes.  He is a very private man who treasures the hours he spends with Rosaleen and their family.

It is most fitting that Michael should be honoured here in the Aula Maxima of his own university.  Ireland owes him an immense debt of gratitude for his contribution to the health care of the nation.

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TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY: PROFESSOR DENIS LUCEY, Acting Head of the College of Business and Law, University College Cork on 6 June, 2008, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on NIALL MELLON

A Leas-Shainsaleir agus a mhuintir uilig na hOllscoile
In January 2008, An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, T.D., visited Freedom Park near Cape Town where, under the auspices of the Niall Mellon Township Trust, 1350 Irish volunteers during one week in November 2007 had built 205 houses, a community centre and a "Garden of Hope" for poor, marginalised South Africans whose living till then had revolved around the squalor of shanty-town shacks.  Describing the project as one which "has captured the imagination of everyone back in Ireland", An Taoiseach went on to "thank everybody at the Trust for showing us what can be done with a lot of spirit and determination".  "I would like" he said "to pay particular tribute to the personal commitment shown by Niall Mellon in forming and guiding the Trust.  As an entrepreneur, he has shown remarkable generosity and social responsibility - not only in giving back, but in encouraging others to do likewise."

The "building blitz" of November 2007 was the fifth annual Irish army of volunteers who had raised funds in Ireland to cover their trip, had contributed substantially to the cost of the building materials and had given a week of hard work to build homes and communities for the really needy in the Cape Town townships.  The story started in 2002 when Niall went on holidays in South Africa with his then girlfriend, Nicola, and was appalled by the thousands of shacks to be seen all along the motorway between the airport and the beautiful city of Cape Town.  These images kept haunting his mind and, after a few days of conventional tourism, Niall decided to see at first hand what a township was really like.

So Niall visited one of the Townships and met some of the community leaders there.  He was dumbstruck by the horrific conditions in which people were living - families in one room shacks, about nine feet by nine feet, made from scrap wood, plastic sheets and bits of metal, unbearably hot in summer and freezing cold and flooded in winter, with no clean water, no electricity and often with no access to any sanitary facilities.

The second great impression on Niall was the warmth of the welcome he received from the people in the township and their great dignity despite their horrific living conditions.  Saying to himself that "No human being should live in those conditions", Niall decided to do something about it and the Niall Mellon Township Trust was born with an initial donation of one million euro from Niall.  The first focus was to be on the township of Imizamo Yethu, a shanty town near the fashionable Hout Bay and the ideas on what could be done and how to do it developed quite rapidly through intense rounds of local consultation both within the township and with local authorities and other civic leaders.

Fate often intervenes in mysterious ways.  Niall and Nicole were married towards the end of 2002 and duly planned their romantic honeymoon in Cape Town (where else?), Within a day or two of their arrival word reached them that a sudden fire had ravaged a substantial part of Imizamo Yethu so Niall and Nicola donned their oldest clothes and spent the next four or five days doing emergency work in the township, organising reconstruction supplies and emergency shelter provision and, critically, financing disaster relief supplies for speedy delivery and reconstruction.  What a honeymoon!  I am glad, however, that they are still together and Nicola has recently become the proud mother of her third baby boy!  In my view, those days in December 2002 showed the Imizamo Yethu people that the dashing young Irishman who had visited them earlier in the year was not just full of talk and sympathy.  He had reappeared in their hour of need and catalytically helped them to cope with a real community crisis.

The Mellon Township Challenge was launched in 2003.  One hundred and fifty Irish volunteers came and built 25 brick homes.  The next year 350 came and built 50 homes, with 700 volunteers in 2005 completing 106 homes.

Of course, the annual Irish "building Blitz" is the aspect of the Trust activity which has most visibility in Ireland, but, like the elegant swan, there's a lot of other work going on which we don't really see here in Ireland.  Niall's Trust bought out a construction firm, which employs several hundred local people, providing income, employment, and up-skilling for people in the shanty communities and building brick houses on a year-round basis.  The Trust has by now been working with 23 Townships in Cape Town and Johannesburg and is targeting 7000 house completions in all for 2008!  The Trust also has the largest charity-owned timber frame housing factory coming on stream in South Africa with a planned capacity of 100 new timber frame houses per week when fully operational next year.

Meanwhile, the next Irish "invasion" is being organised.  For 2008, Niall plans to have 2008 Irish volunteers travelling!!  A further 1000 are planned for Spring 2009 while for 2010, magic numbers like 5,000 volunteers are being talked abut to mark the World Cup Year!!

All of this was made possible from Niall's entrepreneurial successes in the financial, fund management, property, hotel and leisure sectors.  Yet, Niall only turned 40 last year.  What a set of personal achievements and what a magnificent return to those in need!

Rumour has it, of course, that Niall's entrepreneurial talents manifested themselves at an early age.  He had barely become a teenager when he is reported to have come across a cheap job-lot of fire extinguishers and convinced all the neighbours of the vital importance of buying a fire extinguisher to protect their property and children from the ravages of domestic fires.

Niall has received tremendous recognition and support from leaders such as Nelson Mandela, himself an honorary Doctor of the NUI, and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, affectionately know as "The Arch", himself a Freeman of the City of Dublin.  In his January speech the Taoiseach committed €5 million from Irish Aid to the Niall Mellon Township Trust.  In February of this year "The Arch" accompanied Niall and his Trust colleagues to Washington to lobby the US Congress for financial support, especially for the Super Housing Factory.  They were on a round of meetings with key Senators, Committees and House Leaders.  They met the influential Congressional Black Caucus, chaired by Congresswoman Carolyn Kilpatrick.  The Committee cut through Niall's carefully crafted pitch for funds and asked him how much he was seeking to which Niall suggested 25 million dollars.  The next appointment was with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  While walking to the Speaker's Office, Ms. Kilpatrick had a gentle word with Niall, suggesting that he pitch for a more ambitious figure, so when Nancy Pelosi, in turn, asked him how much he was seeking, the brave Niall said "fifty million".  The normally unflappable Arch, who had not heard the earlier "Kilpatrick whisper in Niall's ear" almost did a double-take when he heard Niall's "fifty million" and nearly fell off his chair, such was his state of shock.  Acting quickly on good advice and seizing opportunities has been a hall mark of Niall's career.

Niall is currently exploring the possibility of extending the Trust's activity elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, so who knows how his boundless energy and entrepreneurial talents will stimulate this great work in the future.  I deliberately use the word "stimulate" because the easy thing for Niall to have done would have been to give money.  Instead, he has thrown himself into the activity and by stimulating successive waves of Irish volunteers he has built public awareness, personal achievement and political commitment to supporting practical development partnerships among vast numbers of Irish people - not just the volunteers but the wider communities who have contributed to fundraising for the individual volunteers.

In January, An Taoiseach specifically singled out the Trust's volunteers
"Yours sense of social responsibility in reaching out to communities is commendable.  It is indeed heartening that we still have in Ireland that sense of interest in the world beyond our own island - an awareness of the needs of others and a determination to do our part to reduce poverty and inequality where we can."

It is an honour for me, Vice-Chancellor, to introduce Niall Mellon to you today and to ask you to confer our highest honour on this most worthy Irishman, now just entering the prime of his life, recognising the good that he has done to-date and imagining what can be achieved over the coming decades by expanding the global numbers who, like him, believe that, as far as Africa is concerned, Yote Yanawezekana, - Everything is Possible.!

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TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY:   PROFESSOR CAROLINE FENNELL, Dean, Faculty of Law, University College Cork on 6 June, 2008, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on SAMANTHA POWER

There is an extent to which we are always living in an age of translation and interpretation. In the same way as the seanchai or singers of tales of old always imbued their stories with a new slant in their re-telling, our current world abounds with versions of stories or approximations of the truth. In the cacophony of voices inhabiting our media encrusted world it can be difficulty to hear a new- or true-voice. Moreover in the same way as the ear must become accustomed to say classical music-or rap-and in like manner to our modern day deafness to the language say of Jane Austin, our failure to 'hear' certain stories is a feature-and failing-of modern life.

So it is all the more remarkable and welcome when a voice emerges that is not only fresh and clearly audible but distinctive. Such a voice is that of Samantha Power. The reason for that audibility is deceptively simple and quite profound: Samantha Power describes the subject of her latest book -Chasing the Flame - Sergio de Mello as a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy.  In like vein, her own work can be seen a cross between the best of crime fiction and a classic political and legal analytical commentary. The mixture of genres not only ensures the reception of the work however and its larger impact it also reveals an important truth about the relationship between the particular and the general. In lives lead and in the smaller systems we see 'the world [that is] in a grain of sand' (Blake). As Tom Murphy, Playwright, says all life's stories are in his native Tuam and so the real delivery of human rights is on the ground: in activism; in respect played out and displayed by and for individuals literally making the 'airy nothingness' of human rights possible by giving it as Bryan MacMahon said of poetry 'a local habitat and a name'.

Samantha Power does all of this in her work. Born in Ireland, educated in Ireland and America, she offers in the tone of her commentary on world affairs a combination of confidence, depth, and reflection which marks perhaps the new contribution of Ireland to America and the world - that of a voice born of both experiences, not limited by either.  Power is a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law and her first book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide grew out of a paper she wrote in law school. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non Fiction in 2003. She is currently Anna Lindh Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, at Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government.

In 2004 she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 top scientists and thinkers of that year and in 2008 one of the top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy/Prospect. Power has served as senior foreign policy adviser to Senator Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Her most recent book is Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (Penguin Press 2008).

Samantha Power takes on the world's most important topics: genocide (in A Problem from Hell) Human Rights activism (in Chasing the Flame) and in her journalism the burning locations and issues of the day - such as Darfur - to great effect. Yet her touch is a light - that is to say deft - one. This might be because she is conscious she is telling a story - that she has an audience -and that she does not want to lose their attention. In the acknowledgment to her most recent book Power gives an insight to this where she refers to advice from Terry George (director of the film Hotel Rwanda) who she credits with asking her:
"But what is the universal story here, the tale that does not depend on time or place".

Gracious though she is in that credit - Power perhaps always knew that was important. Her tale of genocide and the interweaving of the personal stories and immense contribution of individuals like Raphael Lemkin in A Problem from Hell pay testament to that insight.

Power also celebrates or perhaps manifests occasional and necessary dissent. She admires and celebrates those who do not always toe the party line. Witness her comment that "...[Sergio Vieira de Mello] knew that the UN, the multinational organisation that he believed had to step up to meet transnational security, socioeconomic, environmental, and health concerns, had a knack for "killing the flame" - the flame of idealism that motivated some to strive to combat injustice and that inspired the vulnerable to believe that help will soon come."

In A Problem from Hell she also documents the fact that Hooper and Johnson career foreign service officers sent an important memo on Bosnia to Eagleburger (Acting Secretary of State) through the dissent channel, introduced at the end of the Vietnam war so that those who disagreed with policy could make their views known to senior officials without having to clear them with immediate bosses.'  

The significance of the local in terms of the global has similarly characterised Power's work. In A Problem from Hell she examined genocide through the lens of particular experiences and contexts. More recently the human rights community generally has come to appreciate intellectually as well as practically the critical nature of that interrelationship for both: for the local where human rights norms and standards may provide a useful guide to assessment, and the global to ensure effective enforcement of International Conventions and Treaties. This puts the lie to the notion that there are two distinct fields of endeavour - national and transnational; global and local, particular and general, and makes the point that their interconnectedness is what makes them powerful.

Samantha Power has herself made the point that:
'The battle to stop genocide has been lost - and can be won - in the realm of domestic politics' (@ p3 Conversations in A Problem from Hell);
while in an interview which she gave to Browne Journal of World Affairs in Fall 2005 she further commented 'We need to stop overestimating American power, and diversity; be more solicitous of local opinion.'

So let us take that advice and reflect a little on the local here and its role in the making of this remarkable individual.
Samantha Power, the individual - who makes a difference and does it differently;
a woman in a long line of strong women;
an Irish person who went from the local to the global and learned perhaps by living herself in translation to bring her message to a wider world on a topic of importance to the whole world.

The importance of the personal - which came late perhaps to Vieira de Mello, the subject of her latest book - has always been a source of strength to Power as is evident in the acknowledgments and tributes in her books.  

The nourishment of the whole person and the humanity, humour and delight that characterises Power's work are not accidental. Samantha Power's mother Dr Vera Delaney has been a source of strength, inspiration and influence, and she and Edmund Bourke provide an enviable source of support, constructive critique and advice on her work. Here UCC can claim some credit as Vera is a first class honours Biochemistry graduate of UCC, who then went on to study medicine. Munster can claim a role also, as Vera played both hockey and tennis for Munster. With local pedigree like that it is small wonder that Samantha went on to take on the world, and we should take local pride in that achievement. Perhaps that strong sense of being rooted in a family identity and community influenced also the nexus between idealism and realism which is a constant theme of Power's work. It connects with the idealist and pragmatist approach found in Vieira de Mello by Power, and is manifest in her own writing and activism. It celebrates a commitment to language (and here we turn full circle) as the key to a people's culture and culture as a key to their heart (at p310 Chasing the Flame). This latter is reflected in Power's own strength of narrative, which ensures that her message and her work is neither lost in translation, nor buried beneath the weight of a ponderous and unwieldy expression (the allusion to the United Nations is intended).

Conor Gearty in his Hamlyn lecture 2005 'Can Human Rights Survive' (at 56-57) expressed the following view:
 "In this current age of doubt, with cruelty abundant in the gaps left in our culture by the abandonment of all our truths, and with the retreat of our soldiers of certainty swelling into a panicked stampede, we have reached the point where we should now admit that human kind simply cannot cope with too much unreality. We need truths - especially if they are true but also even if we have to make them up. It is not enough to leave everything to sentiment - our better selves need more help than a few recommended readings, a movie or two, and a deft capacity to dodge unpleasant conversations. Our culture is simply not up to jettisoning so much of the past while holding out such intangible and unsupported hope for the future. And if the good guys give up on the language of human rights, the others - less principled, differently motivated - will fill the words with a bleaker kind of meaning...The term 'human rights' is the phrase we use when we are trying to describe decency in our post-philosophical world. It provides a link with the better part of our past while guiding us towards the finer features of our future."     

That latter - providing a link with the past and guiding us towards a finer future - seems to me to exemplify the work of Samantha Power.

Praehonorabilis Vice-Cancellarie, totaque universitas.
Praesento vobis hanc meam filiam, quam scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneam esse quae admittatur, honoris causa, ad gradum Doctoratus in utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico, idque tibi fide mea testur ac spondeo totique Academiae.
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TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY: PROFESSOR DERMOT KEOGH, Head, Department of History, in University College Cork on 6 June, 2008, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on PATRICK RICE

Patrick Rice has spent nearly forty years in Latin America working in the area of Human Rights education and in defence of the rights of the families of the 'disappeared.'  Born in Fermoy in September 1945, he was educated at the local Christian Brothers' school. He joined the Divine Word Missionaries, studied at St Patrick's, College, Maynooth, and was ordained in 1970. His order sent him to Argentina as a chaplain to the Catholic University of Santa Fe and as an assistant professor in the Philosophy Department of the same university.  

Dissatisfied with his pastoral role, he left the Divine Word Missionaries in 1972 and joined the Little Brothers [Hermanitos] of Charles de Foucauld. After his novitiate had ended in 1973, he became a worker priest in Santa Fe Province serving as part of a pastoral programme to unionise forest workers and agricultural labourers.  In 1974, he moved to Buenos Aires, got a job as a carpenter on a building site and lived with the Hermanitos in the shanty town of Villa Soldati.

Following the coup in 1976, the military authorities viewed the pastoral mission of the Hermanitos with great suspicion and many members were forced to go underground.  Gross violation of human rights quickly became the hallmark of the new regime. Mutilated bodies were dumped near Villa Soldati, including the cadavers of two Uruguayan members of congress. In all, nearly 30,000 were 'disappeared' before the military were forced from power in 1983.

Those working in defence of human rights under the military regime could not count on widespread support in Argentina. Instead of the condemnation of human rights abuses, many people responded to the frequent disappearances with the now infamous phrase - "algo habrán hecho," or 'they [that is, those who were 'disappeared'] must have done something.' Nobody was safe.  The outspoken Bishop of La Rioja, Enrique Angelelli was killed by the military on 4 August 1976. Accompanied by a member of the Fraternity, Patrick made the long and difficult bus journey to the diocese during a 'state of siege' to investigate the circumstances in which the bishop had died.  Returning to the capital, he continued the investigation into disappearances and helped produce a report "Violence against the Argentine Church" which received international attention. Patrick later described that investigation as his first work in the field of human rights.  

Patrick, despite the danger in the capital, kept working openly. His life was changed by the events of 11 October 1976. That night, he left a prayer meeting in his parish in Villa Soldati accompanied by an eighteen-year-old catechist, Fatima Cabrera.  They suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed men. They were hooded, bundled into an unmarked car and taken to a secret detention centre where they were tortured over a number of days, sometimes in adjacent rooms or in the same room.

Recalling those events, Fatima wrote recently that there were moments when she had the sensation that she was no longer alive. In Fatima's own words:  Ellos, los militares, eran los dueños de la vida. Their military torturers were the arbiters over who lived or died.  But despite their ordeal, Patrick and Fatima did not share the fate of the 30,000 disappeared.  Prompt and courageous action by the staff of the Irish embassy in Buenos Aires certainly helped save both of their lives. The then third secretary, Justin Harman, hearing of Patrick's disappearance, worked with Ambassador Wilfred Lennon, to establish his whereabouts. Now Irish ambassador to Moscow, Mr Harman, who is here today, did not give up. He was the source for a news item in The London Times on 14 October which reported Patrick's abduction. The following day, the same paper reported an Irish embassy source confirming that he was in police custody but his whereabouts and the reason for his detention were not known. Meanwhile, questions were being raised at the United Nations in New York about the whereabouts of the 'disappeared' Irishman.

The military authorities transferred Patrick to a new holding centre.  Being over six feet tall, his military guard found it hard to stuff him into the boot of a car.   Fatima Cabrera arrived at the same prison a few days later.  Both showed the signs of physical abuse and torture.  On 19 October, Patrick was shaved by his captors and told that he was to receive visitors.  He was also advised, if he did not want to wind up in a sack at the bottom of the River Plate, to say that he had fallen down a stairs. His visitors, the Irish ambassador and Justin Harman, were delighted to see him but distressed by his appearance. They assured him that they would work hard to get him out of jail.

In December 1976, as Patrick was being released from jail his captors asked him to write something positive in their records. He wrote, with characteristic understatement: "I might have been treated better."  

Nearly thirty years later, a fellow prisoner and survivor told Patrick he believed that many of the prisoners in that holding centre were alive today because he had seen them. Therefore, the military were unable to make them 'disappear.'

On his return to Cork, Patrick was helped make a good recovery by Professor Bob Daly of UCC. And so began a new phase in his life as a campaigner for human rights.  In 1976 to 1977, he worked in London with Latin American refugees. He was a founding chairperson of the Committee for Human Rights in Argentina. He went on speaking tours in France, Spain and the United States to denounce torture in Argentina.

Between 1978 and 1980, he moved to the United States and helped found the Washington Committee for Human Rights in Argentina. He lobbied the US Government and Congress on human rights. In 1979, Patrick helped organize with Senator Christopher Dodd a hearing on the 'Disappeared' in Argentina. He also worked with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In 1980, Patrick moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where he lived with a community of the Hermanitos in shantytowns near the capital.  He began promoting human rights within the pastoral programmes of the local archdiocese. He also cooperated in assisting refugees from Haiti. In January 1981, Patrick helped organise in Costa Rica the First Latin American Congress of Families of the Disappeared. He became one of the founding members of   FEDEFAM (The Latin American Federation of Associations of Relatives of Disappeared-Detainees).  He served as its Executive Secretary from 1981 to 1987.  

As part of his work with FEDEFAM, he visited most Latin American countries to investigate situations of enforced disappearances and began to lobby actively at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.  He also represented FEDEFAM when, in 1982, it received the Spanish Human Rights award. He did a speaking tour of ten cities in the US organized by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation, and, accompanied by the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, received a peace prize.

With the fall of the Argentine military junta in 1983, Patrick returned to Buenos Aires. There he mourned the loss of so many members of his order and their friends. Returning to Villa Soldati, he met Fatima Cabrera. He had last seen her in prison in December 1976. She had, in the interim, spent two years in jail and a further two years under house arrest. Patrick left for Venezuela again, but kept in contact by letter with Fatima. They married in Caracas in May 1985. Two of their children were born in Caracas, and the third, Blanca, when they returned to live in Buenos Aires in 1987. She is here today with her mother.

Living back in Buenos Aires, it was not long before Patrick became involved in human rights training and education at the Ecumenical Movement for Human Rights. He coordinated training courses, seminars and workshops throughout the country.   In 1992, he became the national coordinator of that organisation and got involved in prison visitation and assistance to families of the disappeared. He coordinated training courses for teachers in human rights.   In 1999, Patrick began to work again with FEDEFAM and was nominated as Senior Adviser to the Executive Committee.

• He has led a training seminar in Sri Lanka in 1999 organized by the Asian Federation on Involuntary Disappearances.  
• He has participated in the Consultation on Disappearances in Africa, in Benin in 2002.
• He has attended  the General Meeting of Families of the Missing in Croatia in 2002
• and Patrick has also taken part in 2003 in consultations with the Office of Forensics and Missing persons in Pristinha, Kosovo.

In 2002, the Irish Diplomatic Mission at Geneva nominated him as the Western Group's candidate for membership of the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances. He participated in much of the advocacy to gain approval for an international instrument against enforced disappearances. That was finally achieved on 23 September 2005.  

Over the past forty years, Patrick Rice has been a tireless worker in the field of human rights - as a teacher, educator, activist and lobbyist. For her part, Fatima has had responsibility for running the national adult literacy campaign in Argentina. She now directs the adult literacy campaign in the greater Buenos Aires which has a population of thirteen million.

A few days ago, before leaving Buenos Aires, both Patrick and Fatima were key-witnesses in the trial of a police chief accused of sanctioning a massacre at Pilar, in 1976, in which nearly twenty people were shot. Today in Argentina such testimony is not without danger. Two years ago, another key witness in a similar trial was 'disappeared' and is presumed dead. And so the struggle continues.  The leading Argentinian poet, Juan Gelman, recalled how his son, Marcello, and his pregnant wife, Claudia, were 'disappeared' by the military on 24 August 1976. Both died in a concentration camp and Gelman writes:
The military
dictatorship never officially
recognised their 'disappearance.'
It spoke of 'those forever absent.'
Until I have seen their bodies
Or their murderers, I will never give them up for dead.

Juan Gelman's determination, as reflected in those powerful lines, is shared by Patrick and Fatima Cabrera Rice. They will continue to reclaim the memory of those who have been 'disappeared' and never be intimidated into silence.

Picture shows L-R: Patrick Rice, LLD,  Niall Mellon, LLD, Dr Michael Hyland, MD, Samantha Power, LLD and Professor Patrick Fottrell, DSc.

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