Today Mrs Mary Robinson will sign the papers which terminate her period in office as President of Ireland. It will mark the closing of a significant chapter in the contemporary story of this island and the ending of a remarkable influence in the development and the maturing of this society. Did she act as a catalyst of change or did the changing age call forth a woman who reflected its likeness? Whatever the truth, the symbiosis between President and people unleashed remarkable instincts and powerful forces. Ireland 1997 is a very different place from Ireland 1990, when Dick Spring advanced Mary Robinson for a new style of presidency. The economic gains are palpable. The physical changes in the urban landscape and the upgrading of infrastructure are everywhere to be seen. But the truly far-reaching changes have been in Irish minds. We are a people more confident, more tolerant, more free-thinking. We are perhaps more honest about our shortcomings and a little less complacent about some of our supposed virtues.
The 1990s have been a decade of transformation for Ireland. New laws offer greater personal freedoms. We have undergone cathartic revelations of corruption and double standards in Church and State. We are learning that long-term peace on this island will only be secured by great generosity and tolerance. And there is increasingly a pride and a confidence among ordinary people that they can live their lives without being beholden to priest or politician or bureaucrat. In a way that few who knew her would have predicted, Mary Robinson somehow affirmed these potent instincts among Irish people. She was seen as coming from outside the political system, for all that she had been politically active since college days. She was a supremely presentable representative in front of the world. She was, above all else, an independent, well-educated, elegant, modern woman in a country whose political iconography - male, staid, safe and supine - had proven itself inadequate and redundant.
Her work here is done and done well. From the moment she took office, up to this week, she has adhered to a punishing schedule. Everything she did was honed to perfection. It is difficult to believe that she could have undertaken a further seven years at the same pace. As UN High Commissioner for Human Rights she will undoubtedly carry an enormous workload but she will have the support of a powerful administrative structure behind her and her personal, figurehead role ought to be considerably less demanding.
Her departure now is also probably the right thing for Ireland. If she were to have served for a further seven years she would have ended up, very likely, repeating much of what she did in the first term. It must be likely that the charisma and the magic would have faded in considerable degree. The stimulus and the encouragement which a visit from Mary Robinson imparted, say, to a community group in the early 1990s, would be difficult to replicate in a repeat visit a decade later. Nor, perhaps, is that stimulus or encouragement as vital as it was. The process of liberation, of people and communities discovering their own potential, is considerably further advanced than it was when first she began to go among the women's groups and the community activists in 1990.
She now takes with her, hardly without exception, the good wishes and the admiration of the entire Irish people. She has changed, irrevocably, the potential of the presidency and she has left a permanent and unique imprint upon the fabric of Irish society. Of her it can be said, as of few others, that she has made a permanent and profound contribution to the political and social health of our people. She now moves on to the world stage. Who knows what is within her capacity for the benefit of the global community?