 Thank you, Tom. That's really putting it up to me. The only worst thing you could say is, this is going to be a really, really funny speech. That would be. But the title of today's publication is Irish Friends and Friends of Ireland, and it was a great pleasure to be in London at a time when it was at last possible to introduce speeches with those simple words. On my current posting in Rome, I suppose that the similarly embracing words of welcome would in theory be Mark Antony's Friends, Romans and Countrymen. And I'm delighted that the Institute for International of European Affairs is one place where I can appropriately begin with the words European friends and friends of Europe lend me your ears. I'm very honoured that the IAEA has offered to publish this set of speeches from my time in London, an exceptionally interesting period in British-Irish relations, and I'd like to thank Tom and the Institute for their support. It's particularly appropriate that the Institute should publish speeches which seek to capture something of the spirit of the modern British-Irish relationship in view of the immensely important and original ongoing work of the Institute itself in relation to the British-Irish relationship. I have enjoyed a long relationship with the IAEA in addition to the book which it kindly published for me in 1997. I have spoken here many times. Indeed, one of the speeches in this compilation was delivered here in this room in 2012. I might add that both while working in the European Union division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and during my time with the EU commission also drafted several other addresses delivered here in North Great Georgia Street by ministers and commissioners. I was once travelling in a car with Gay Mitchell when he was Minister for European Affairs and he was sitting beside his political adviser and in their conversation the fact came up that they had a mutual friend who was a piano tuner. He had tuned both of their pianos and Gay Mitchell said to his political adviser it must be very tough spending all your life tuning other people's pianos and never getting a chance to play yourself. Minister, that's what it's like being a civil servant. And I'm pleased and I have no doubt that it's a good thing in the modern Irish public service that civil servants increasingly get the opportunity to play the piano themselves. In that context I'd like to thank Secretary General Niall Burgess of the Department of Foreign Affairs for both being here which he will be shortly but also for his support, enthusiastic support for this publication. And of course I'm also immensely grateful to all my colleagues and former colleagues many of whom I see here today not just people I work with in relation to London but also especially Brussels former Director General of European Union Division many of them here and who worked with me in Brussels as well and without whom I could have achieved nothing and several of whom could with at least equal justification publish selections of their speeches and hopefully someday will do so. And thanks as Tom says above all to my wife Mary it's more than just standard procedure for a diplomat to thank his spouse since the job of being a diplomat abroad involves perhaps more than any other profession the support of an unpaid partner. In the case of this publication I also thank Mary for her perfectly pitched drafting advice whenever I have inflicted my draft speeches on her. I'd like to say a few words about the dozen or so speeches I've selected for publication today which constitute just a small selection of the many hundreds of speeches which I delivered during my time in London. It was of course a unique period in British Irish relations a period which saw the Queen's visit to Ireland in which the closeness of the geography of our islands at last became more important than the divisions of our history in which the chemistry of friendship finally trumped the physics of confrontation a period which saw warmer relations between our peoples than at any time in the preceding thousand years or to put it in a more vivid way which during the London Olympics saw English boxing fans cheering Katie Taylor to the rafters and Irish boxing fans giving Nicola Adams of Team GB the Olay Olay treatment. The collection being published today does not include any of the speeches I made promoting Irish business interests and economic reputation probably the largest category or any of the speeches pitched to the achievements and needs of the diverse Irish community in Britain. Three criteria have determined my selection for this publication. First the speeches are amongst those that I made specifically on British Irish relations during this historic period and which for that reason alone may in some degree merit being drawn together in this way. Some of the speeches have a European dimension even an important European dimension which reflects the importance to the British Irish relationship of our shared membership of the European Union. Second the speeches are unashamedly prepared speeches and they are being published in exactly the form in which I delivered them subject to extremely minor editorial tweaks. While I'm not against more off the cup speeches and indeed the large majority of my speeches have been more loosely prepared most of the things that have ever been said have been prepared carefully and tightly drafted in advance. The idea which many appear to share in today's world of tweets and sound bites that prepared speeches are necessarily stilted and that a speaker must give the impression of ad-libbing or winging it is simply nonsense. Third and most importantly these speeches were written to be delivered to specific audiences on specific occasions. They are not major addresses written for academic analysis or for media coverage or indeed for publication I'm aware that there may seem to be a contradiction in publishing speeches that were not written for publication but I know that the IIA understands that well and I'm grateful for their encouragement. The speeches were written to capture in a fleeting moment a certain experience to make people smile to touch their hearts and sometimes perhaps to nudge them into sharing for a brief moment into what Wilfred Owen calls the eternal reciprocity of tears. I'm not going to rehash the speeches today or to summarise them but I would just make five brief observations which occurred to me as I re-read them recently a few years after their delivery. First one of the joys for an Irish ambassador delivering speeches in Britain is that we Irish and British share a language in every sense not just linguistically but also metaphorically. We understand the subtleties of each other's languages and follow easily the highways and byways of each other's thought processes. In other words no linguistic limits of comprehension are imposed by a journey to the Irish sea. This makes an immense difference to the language and poetry and humour that we can deploy in speeches. The second thing which struck me flicking through these speeches again is the potential of the spoken language just sometimes to reach out to touch and perhaps sometimes gently to transform. I'm a strong believer that almost every occasion is enhanced by a speech of some sort. It tends to make guests feel welcome and participants to feel valued. It can create for a moment a sense of community amongst those present and meeting once off community perhaps but nonetheless palpable. A speech does not have to be long. Someone once said no soul was ever saved after the first ten minutes of a sermon but a speech should be tailored and be seen to be tailored to the occasion in question. In a world of tweets, blogs and text messages we suffer from an overload of words. Man's technological ability to communicate has for the most part become more important than what we want to say. He has outstripped our ability to express our meaning or even to have a meaning to express. But we should remember that words can be important in breaking down even the oldest and most impenetrable barriers. One thinks for example of the words of mutual respect, the words of honest recognition, the words of heartfelt empathy in both directions which have characterised British Irish relations in recent years. And especially in this institute which has done so much to stimulate debate on Europe it is worth reminding ourselves also as I said on one of the occasions that he came to the London Embassy that words are also the stuff of compromise, the necessary material for shaping the fair and respectful compromises which characterise the European Union. There is nothing wrong with fudge when the alternative is firepower, there is nothing wrong with twisted words on a continent which has known so many centuries of twisted bodies. In many cases what is described as fudge is not the clumsy use of language but the very precise and creative use of language, a point which Seamus Heaney said, the third aspect of these speeches which strikes me now is the immense affection which British people have for Ireland today. I don't need to characterise before an audience in Dublin Irish attitudes towards the United Kingdom but looking at it from the other end of the telescope as I did for four years my experience in London confirmed a number of things about British attitudes to Ireland. That no embassy is now more warmly received in London than the Irish Embassy. That following the shared progress on Northern Ireland we moved up the British agenda rather than down it. That the unprecedented harmony that now exists between our islands is seen across the Irish sea not just as closing a long grim chapter of the book of our shared history but importantly as opening a fresh chapter of opportunity for example in the business area and in the cultural area. The establishment of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce has been a very important development in that regard. When William Haig came to Ireland for the Queen's visit to Ireland for the launch of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce he joked that when he was invited he thought it must be for the 50th anniversary or the 70th anniversary of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce but that's just one of the many examples of the deepening of the relationship. Another thing that strikes one from the other end of the telescope in London is that the Queen's visit to Ireland and her historic mark of respect for Irish nationalist tradition at the Garden of Remembrance with all its connotations as was of course the laying of wreaths at Ireland Bridge and that Irish people in Britain often have the best of both worlds. We are seen by our British friends as different enough to be interesting and similar enough to be accepted without question into every aspect of British society including its most seemingly impenetrable bastions. I would add just one point on the perception of the Queen's visit from the British end. The British tend to know only a limited amount about Ireland, most British people. That's natural a large island between a small island. The truth is that most British people probably if you ask them whether Ireland is a fully independent country or whether the violence was in the north or the south or whether we have the Europe most probably wouldn't actually know the answer to that question. But they have long known two simple things about Ireland. First that they very much like their Irish neighbours, the people who live next door to them, the people who work with them and second that Irish people have some sort of historical resentment of Britain. They're not quite sure what it is, they know it's a beat England at rugby and they only have a vaguer understanding of why that is. After the Queen's visit my interpretation is that while most British people still don't really understand what the problem was they understand that it's now in the past and that we can look to the future together. The fourth of my five points to mention briefly today is the relationship between Britain and Ireland in Europe. The European Union has played an immense role perhaps more than any other factor in bringing Britain and Ireland closer together. It has given our politicians and officials an opportunity over several decades to meet each other across the table rather than to eye each other across the water. It has provided a legal framework for pursuing our shared interests as never before and it allows us to resolve our differences if and when they arise through force of arguments rather than through force of arms. Ireland and Britain have in many ways grown closer than ever before. The cover of the book being launched today symbolises this perfectly with the Irish flag and the Union Jack presented side by side. Just before I took up my poster in London our embassy in Washington produced a report on the future of Irish-American relations and on the front of the report there was a picture of the Star-Spangled Banner and the Irish flag together and I remember thinking before going to London that it would be impossible to produce a similar cover on a book about British Irish relations because it would be impossible to place the Irish flag and the Union Jack at that time side by side on the cover of such a report. If such an image would at the time have been unsettling or even jarring it would have asked questions rather than answering them. It is a measure a simple but perfect measure of how far we have come that our two flags can today sit comfortably together as they do on the cover of this book. But interestingly there is another flag on the cover of the book namely the European flag which is likely to evoke quite different reactions in Britain and Ireland. In Ireland the European flag is recognised as part of what we are. It is recognised as part of the context of our relations with Britain and indeed have a place among the nations of the earth. However for many British people today although of course by no means all of them it is the European flag which now asks questions rather than answering them. It is the European flag for them which is unsettling or even jarring. This is a reminder that Europe is the one area, the one important area in which Britain and Ireland risk taking quite different paths. It is of course only a risk but a real one nevertheless. It seems to me that it could be said on the one hand there is the open, tolerant, multicultural Britain. The Britain which is aware of and confident in exercising significant influence in the wider world through its engagement with international organisations, through its culture and through its language. The Britain which took the London Olympics in its relaxed stride and celebrated the diversity of its athletes. The Britain where so many Irish find a warm and welcoming home. The Britain several of whose schools take the trouble of laying wreaths which I have seen at the moment. I have seen many cards bearing messages such as in memory of brave men who died for their country. On the other hand there is a more uncertain backward looking narrowly nationalistic Britain which events around the recent, rather unstrwed by-election suggest should also be accorded respect. The Britain which has seemingly lost confidence in its ability to defend its interests in the multilateral globalised world of the 21st century. The Britain which increasingly allows UKIP to set the political agenda on immigration which is more comfortable undermining an international human rights court which had played a central role in establishing then in respecting some of its judgments. The Britain which sees its values as uniquely attractive and at the same time uniquely under threat. The tabloid Britain which hankers after a world of lost empire and lost certainties. The Britain which replaced Ireland several decades ago in thanking God that it's surrounded by water. Britain's future in Europe remains to be played out between these two countries. One of which these days is permanently holding court and the other of which is permanently holding fire. I would add just one comment in this context on the positive relationship we now have with Britain. Our British friends even if they don't agree with what we Irish have to say on Europe are in my experience comfortable with our saying it. Far more than they would be with similar comments from across the channel. I spoke positively about Europe in almost every speech I made in London and at almost every meeting I attended. No one ever said that I was a British journalist. Indeed if the truth be told the most common response I received from British people was gratitude for my remarks and regret that such comments were increasingly rarely heard in the British debate. Finally and I've been advised by my friends to use the word finally very frequently in speeches because it gives the audience hope. Finally because this is the IIEA I would like to conclude with a very brief comment on Europe itself. In several member states there has been a growth in Eurosceptic parties although the support for these parties is more or less commensurate with the support for parties which are essentially anti mainstream politics and it is beyond me how the European Union could be expected to transform people who do not seem to be interested in the compromises inherent in practical governance into people who support the European Union. On the other side the response from mainstream parties is often disappointing. Fighting Euroscepticism with Euroscepticism is a mugs game and a dangerous one at that. The suggestion that we need to create a new Europe as if by magic is simplistic and fraught with risk. There is only one Europe, the one we have, this imperfect frustrating Europe warts and all that is only one small thing in its favour that it is vastly better than all the alternatives. We need to improve and adapt Europe substantially if possible as we constantly try to do through the painstaking process of negotiation. But there is not going to be a new European Union. If we get rid of the one we have built up with such imagination, subtlety and indeed pain there will be nothing in its place except irrelevance, instability and over time probably worse. There is a lazy assumption for which the success of the EU can take the blame or the credit that whatever decisions are taken the European continent can look forward to a permanent future of stability, peace and relative prosperity. However both history and human nature strongly suggest otherwise. In particular in this 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the great war we should remember the institutions of conflict from this continent. And if in concluding I may return to the words of Mark Antony over Caesar's body future generations will not forgive us if today we forget man's proven propensity to let slip the dogs of war. So thank you very much and thank you now for being here and for all your support.