 I want to welcome you all to St. Patrick's Hall here in Dublin Castle. I want to welcome you particularly to hear this address by President von Rumpuy on building the European future. On your behalf, I particularly want to extend a warm welcome to him on this first visit to Ireland in his capacity as the full-time chairman of the council, during which visit he has met with the T-shirt and the Kenny and of course with President Macalese. I would want to say that we're particularly grateful, Mr. President, that you accepted our invitation to be here and all the more grateful in view of the very heavy workload and the demands on your time, which are evident and not least in this week in which you are preparing for the next meeting of the European Council. In fact, so great has been the interest in what it is you have to say that we have to transfer the address from the institute where accommodation is limited to this splendid and very gracious facilities here in St. Patrick's Hall in Dublin Castle and we want to thank the government and particularly the Tornishter for placing the hall at our disposal. Mr. President, I hope that being here in the heart of Dublin Castle will introduce you in a very tangible way to the history of the Irish people. An ancient nation and a young state. It was here on this very spot that foreign rule was imposed on the Irish people over the centuries and here too in the yard outside where I received you, that power was transferred from the occupying forces to the representatives of the independent Irish state in 1922. And it's here in this very hall every seven years that the inauguration of our president takes place and under our written constitution the people are the sovereign power, an obvious reflection of our history and the president under the constitution is both the symbol and the guardian of that sovereignty. By joining the European Economic Community as a den was in 1973 the Irish people voluntarily chose to share elements of their sovereignty with other democratic states in Europe in order to bring about the closer union amongst the peoples of Europe which makes of course your title all the more apt. So I trust that you will understand that we value our sovereignty greatly and I trust you will understand why we so zealously guard it. As someone born into a small state whose sovereignty was violated in the past you can well understand the strength of our sentiments. And that is why Irish policy inside the European Union has always given primacy of place to the principle of the formal equality of all member states and that is why we have so consistently defended the community method of decision making and that is why we are opposed to the emergence of a direct toire composed of larger member states. At this very moment our sovereignty Mr. President is more circumscribed than we would ever have believed possible be it said as a consequence of our own folly not of anybody else's. The threat of a direct toire is now more pressing than we have ever previously experienced. The need for solidarity amongst the member states is now greater than we would have anticipated even three years ago. If we recognise that the Union grows organically and that the European Council has taken on progressively has taken on additional responsibilities which lie outside the legislative field and concern matters of high politics not least connected with economic and monetary Union which is in a sense the driving force of these developments. And we perceive that the Union method as Chancellor Merkel has described it is the next phase of the evolution of Europe. And these are cogent reasons why we supported the creation of your office and why we welcome you and your appointment as its first occupant. The times have dictated as Johnny Shine said the person that we need to lead the European Council through the perilous years ahead and my in my view Mr. President to the in your personal characteristics your professional qualifications and your personal experience professional experience as a politician you satisfy all these requirements I think on this occasion fate has been good to us as Europeans and I truly believe that you have been destined for this role. Ladies and gentlemen Herman von Rompuy is the true European in the sense he was born in Brussels into the Flemish community true European and that at secondary school he took ancient Greek and Latin as amongst his major subjects he went to the Catholic University in Leuven which has such historic connections with our country and from which he received a bachelor's degree in philosophy at the early age of 21 later taking a masters in applied economics quite a change. He then went into the Belgian central bank and afterwards during the 1980s was a lecturer in economics in Antwerp and Brussels. He comes from a political family in the Christian democratic tradition and he entered view politics before serving in the Cabernet's of Leo Tindemans and Gertrond Gays and he began his parliamentary career interestingly in the Senate in 1988 and became national chairman of his party in that same year being elected then to the Chamber of Representatives in 1995 where he served until two years ago. At the relatively young age of 46 he was the deputy prime minister and minister for budget serving in two governments led by Jean-Luc de Hanna and along with Philip Meistat who was well known to us who was then finance minister he helped drive down Belgian government debt from 135% of GDP in 1993 to below 100% in year 2000 and lower still to 87% in 2007. A good pedigree you might add for the task now in hand. He later became prime minister in 2008 but only served for less than a year because on the 19th of November 2009 he was unanimously chosen by the European council to be its first full-time president an office in which he will serve at least the first term for two and a half years. As we know under the Lisbon Treaty the council has now become an institution of the union and the full-time president a new constitutional officer of the union. Incidentally of course the European council is to a great extent the creation of the first Irish presidency of 1976 in which Gareth Fitzgerald played such a prominent and key role and we are very grateful to you Mr. President for the very kind words of appreciation you expressed on Dr. Fitzgerald's death. The task of the president as Johnny Shine has said is to ensure that the council consisting of 27 heads of state and government works efficiently and effectively and to a great extent in unity of purpose and his primary role is to create consensus and to build agreement in the pursuit of the common European interests. His style he has described himself which was mentioned by Johnny Shine, neither expectator nor a dictator but a facilitator and he outlined his philosophy on negotiations which again Johnny has outlined so well and he concluded by saying having said he wanted no losers that I will consider everybody's interests and sensitivities even if our unity remains our strength our diversity remains our wealth he said. As we all know on becoming president he was instantly plunged into the sovereign death crisis and his great skills as a conciliator were immediately put to good use. His first achievement being the creation of the European financial stability mechanism and then the European financial stability facility which provides loans to Greece, Ireland and Portugal a matter of no little interest to us all. The European Council then asked them next to chair a task force on economic governance which reported last year in October and which recommended stronger macroeconomic coordination in the Union and the strengthening of the stability and growth act, the pact which was of course in the first instance devised and agreed in this very building. In addition he has drafted an amendment to article 136 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union which enables a permanent financial stability mechanism to come into place, a matter of profound interest to us all and the odd occasion a matter of some shepidation as we contemplate the prospects of that late at night. So I think therefore that his topic on building the European Union reflects his historic perspective of the European project as a process which evolves as Schumann said on the basis of a very well-known phrase on the basis of concrete achievements which first create de facto solidarity. Mr. President is now my honor to invite you to address this distinguished audience on building the European future.