An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny launched the memoirs of Mary Robinson at Ballina Arts Centre this week where he praised the “extraordinary book” which is “beautifully written” by the former president of Ireland.
Speaking at the event, the Taoiseach said: “Everybody Matters is not just an excellent title of an extraordinary book, it is the philosophy by which Mary Robinson lives and works.
“It is beautifully written and brilliantly observed, managing to be haunting, brave, disturbing, uncomfortable, reassuring, illuminating.”
The Taoiseach commended the memoir for being a powerful testament not just to Ms Robinson’s work as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, but also, “to your courage, your empathy, your compassion, your abiding sense of the universal values that bind us all....the universal rights to which we are committed but which are still not being implemented and upheld by governments on a universal basis.”
He continued: “I believe all over Ireland.... and wherever Irish people are in the world, among them those for whom you kept a light burning, we remember and are proud of the power of your decision to visit these desolate countries to be with these desolate people. We cherish the eloquence of your very presence there as Uachtarán na hÉireann.”
