Conferring Ceremonies at UCC – 6th December 2011
Click Picture to Enlarge
Conferring Ceremonies at UCC – 6th December 2011
06.12.2011

Winter conferring ceremonies commenced today (December 6th 2011) at UCC with some 450 undergraduate and postgraduate students graduating from the College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences. The Conferring addresses were given by Mr Michael Starrett, Chief Executive, the Heritage Council (attached). The ceremonies continue tomorrow (December 7th) and conclude on Friday (December 9th).

Conferring Address by Mr Michael Starrett, Chief Executive, The Heritage Council, 6th December 2011, 10.00am, 12.30pm & 3.30pm 

President Dr. Michael Murphy, Professor Caroline Fennell, University Staff, Graduates, parents and guardians, families and friends,

It is a very real privilege to join you for today’s celebrations. It is humbling and rewarding to address you all on this most significant of days in your collective and individual lives. You are part now of a very special community and I would ask you never to underestimate the significance of that fact.

Despite all the doom and gloom you hear on a daily basis on the economic front you are all, in my view, launching yourself in to a wonderful society that is in the process both of purging itself and indeed healing itself. Our society has just elected a marvellous and inspirational President who will encourage us all to be active citizens working to strengthen our own very creative communities. Community is a wonderful all embracing word and in terms of your future activities and your future creativity you will be part of “the community” in its widest sense. You just have to recognise that and be part of it and strive to bring benefits and positive change.

What community or indeed communities will you be active in? What will you contribute in terms of creativity? Your education has given you the opportunity to make some very conscious and informed decisions – or indeed the capacity just to put yourself into situations where you make decisions and make things happen for you. You can make your own luck. In arriving at this ceremony today you have already indicated to yourselves and to your friends and to your family and to a much wider community, the potential you have to make a very positive contribution to our newly purged and healed society. You must carry your new found status with confidence (not arrogance) and make things happen.

Many of you will be looking for employment. My employment experience and my experience as an employer over the last thirty years have taught me some lessons that I would like to share. Never sit still, never take anything for granted, never think you can’t improve, never be afraid to take a risk and never, never, never let anyone or anything grind you down. There is a less polite way of saying this final phrase but I hope you get my gist, as these are after all very polite proceedings. If you want to check it out I think it was in U2s song Acrobat - on Achtung Baby - that the phrase gained popular notoriety.

If I look at my own career I often wonder how I got to where I am – it can be quite scary if you think about these things too much – maybe someone will find me out. Have I bluffed my way to the situation where I have responsibility for an organisation that is leading the way in promoting and developing new community led approaches to the development, conservation and management of Ireland’s heritage? That organisation employs 15 people directly in Kilkenny and supports 70 others in heritage infrastructure established across the country in a variety of public and private sector initiatives. At its peak the Heritage Council turned over €20 annually. I console myself by saying- no - you can’t bluff to that extent. However I always question. I always analyse and I always try to apply what I learn – to stay flexible and adaptable. Somewhat amoebic you could say. You can do the same. Self questioning is healthy. Especially if you question yourself and have the answers before others do it for you.

At school, my best subjects were languages and yet I ended up a scientist! English, French, Spanish, Latin. I loved them all. However at University I studied Science (Biology and Ecology). My parents said if I studied languages I’d end up teaching. As they were both teachers there was some irony in this. That irony was reinforced after graduation. My first job was in education as a lecturer in a college of further education. Very hard work. Much to my mother’s chagrin I gave that up to carry out species protection work on peregrine falcons in the Mourne Mountains. Very hard work but very healthy. I left that job because I got on better with the peregrines than my employers. My employers wouldn’t put enough emphasis on education and awareness raising to highlight the value of these birds and their natural habitat to the local community. The employers were only interested in enforcement. I was interested in persuasion, in working with people, in realising the value of this natural heritage with the people who worked in and lived in that mountainous landscape.

Those times taught me that you cannot impose your will on others if you are working towards long term objectives and looking for positive change - to change values. The same principle applies in work as it does in life – work with and bring benefits to people and you will succeed. Impose for short term gain and you will not.

I’ve never found it easy to settle, to sit still. Maybe it is that fear of someone catching up with my bluff. Questioning again! Experience has now shown that it wasn’t that fear – it was more a sense of broadening experience, trying something new. In fact once I’d succeeded in one thing - done it well - I’d move on and find something else to do even better. Wherever it was. My career took me to Scotland, to France and numerous countries in Europe before coming back to Ireland to head up the Heritage Council. I’m afraid I followed the work. If it was advertised and I thought I’d like to do it, I applied. 70s and 80s Ireland it has to be said presented young graduates with the same options and challenges as you are now going to face.

The experience of moving, and the different cultures to which I was exposed as a result, have stood me in very good stead. If you have to, or indeed you choose to, you too can face these challenges and benefit not only individually but bring back a much broader perspective to the community to which you will most likely, one day return. As my father put it to me simply – if there is a good job to do and the opportunity to do it arises, you are much better to do it at home.

And as for those languages – I got around that by marrying a French woman! I cannot adequately stress the importance of language to you all. Language is how we communicate with people. My love of languages helped me immensely in all my work and travels and I strongly advocate the need for you all to develop and build on those skills. Even if we speak English and that confers us some competitive advantage we should never be as arrogant as to impose that on others. And we should never lose site of the richness that our Irish language has brought to our use of the English language. Our turn of phrase and much of our creativity find their roots in our Irish language. I was intrigued to read the other day that the direct translation of the Irish word for Jellyfish is – seal snot or spit. How more imaginative and evocative can language be!! In relating to other cultures in our multi- cultural society, being able to communicate in, or at least acknowledge the importance of someone else’s language to them, is also a competitive advantage and one we should develop for our own sense of humility and integrity.

In conclusion, as an ecologist it would be improper of me not to emphasise the interdependence and interrelationships that are so essential in life. The oldest cliché in the book is that no person is an island. If we act as islands, we are lonely and less productive. It removes that sense of community I emphasised at the outset. In work terms we talk about multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams and I like to think that the Heritage Council works as an ecological organisation. I like to encourage the individuals in the team to be multidisciplinary. If they are, they appreciate much more that every action taken by an individual has an impact on the organisation as a whole and of course on the people who that individual is working with. If you bear that in mind you become a peoples person – realising the consequences of actions and as a result, and assuming that responsibility, you will take positive actions only and make informed decisions. It seems a good way to end and point you towards your goal.

When you leave here today, take positive actions and make informed decisions. If you do you have little to fear and I have no doubt you can all succeed in achieving the goals that you set.

I wish you all well, Many thanks.

ENDS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



<<Previous ItemNext Item>>

« Back to 2011 Press Releases