Speech by the Taoiseach, Mr Enda Kenny T.D. at the One World Conference Convention Centre

You are all very welcome to Dublin. Céad Míle Fáilte.
I’m delighted to be with you to launch this excellent forum.
Thank you for inviting me.

You have come here today from every part of the world.
Representing business, industry, a myriad of economic and social sectors from across the globe.
But equally you come here as Leaders.
Leaders of Hope, Dignity, Justice, Responsibility, Community, Compassion.
The values we require, the qualities we depend on to find, install and promote a sense of not just ‘doing’ but just as crucially a sense ‘of being’ of ‘belonging’ in the world.
Our world. One world.
Here in this conference then you both declare and disallow.
By declaring your citizenship of the one world of Sierra Leone and Sudan, of Gaza and Ukraine or of Syria, Iraq, Lhasa, Hong Kong.
You are clearly and unequivocally disallowing yourselves the comfort of co-ordinates.
Today, your one-world neighbour
Could be trading millions on a stock exchange.
Patenting an app
Giving birth to a son or daughter who could live either 90 years or 90 days depending on location.
Or maybe teaching their child to swim.
One parent hoping it will be a skill for life.
Another parent hoping it will save their life in the monsoon.
These from Pole to Pole, each and all of them are your co-habitants.
Together Today we all live, speak and hear a kind of economic and financial language.
Of junk, equities, bonds, hedged, unhedged, liquidity, bubbles, sophisticated pricing models, market consensus the hunt for yield.
Here in Ireland we are recovering.
Again our vital signs are good

70,000 additional jobs since we launched our Action Plan for Jobs.
Our national finances have stabilised. We’re back in the markets.

Today, Ireland has the youngest workforce in the EU and the most adaptable workforce in the world.
We’re in the global top 20 for the quality of our scientific research
9 out of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world, have made Ireland their home.
It’s clear that, internationally, investors are looking at Ireland and liking what they see.
And because they do in the last 18 months, companies like Tyco, Amazon, HedgeServ, Deutsche Bank, Twitter, EMC, eBay, Salesforce, Novartis, Vistakon, Facebook, Zurich, Symantec, De Puy, Yahoo, Sanofi and Indeed.com have all brought their business to our shores.
Good news? Yes. It’s great news.
But all this investment, all the efficient balance sheets, were and can never be the end in themselves.
Rather they are only and wholly about what they can do and achieve for the Irish people.
Because this recovery is the people’s recovery.
It’s their sacrifice, often cruel sacrifice, which has given us this success.
And today I say to you young leaders, some of whom will go on to form and lead governments that we as leaders, as a government, from day one we were always absolutely clear.
That overseeing Ireland’s recovery was not only a political challenge.
For us above all Ireland’s recovery was and remains a democratic privilege a national obligation.
Because it is through our recovery that this and future generations could fulfil their right and desire as citizens of this republic of this ‘one world’.
And that is to live a dignified, meaningful life.

Today across Europe 5 million young men and women are being denied that right because they have no job no work to go to.
And all at a time when employers say they can’t find people with the skills they need.
In Ireland’s recent Presidency of the EU we put youth unemployment high on the agenda.
With the Youth Guarantee our Union will help our young people move from education to employment with every young person offered jobs-focused training within four months of leaving education or becoming unemployed.
To you, as young leaders, I reprise what I told the European Parliament.
That the unemployment figure amongst our young people is intolerable.
As leaders we must not allow a generation to grow up believing that democracy itself has failed to give them a reasonable chance in life.
Because it is they who are democracy’s future, Europe’s tomorrow, our Union’s hope.

And how future generations will live is part of your urgent agenda in this conference.
How we will deal as one world, with the risks we know and those we have yet to imagine, let alone quantify, as the effects of weather and climate are brought to bear on our lives.
And while those who have done the least to damage our planet are affected the most, even here in the developed world, we see the effects of our warming oceans with increased drought, storms, flooding.
At the recent Climate Change summit at the UN we, today’s leaders, pledged to make every effort to do all we can to make the necessary change.
Because if we do not, then for our children and grandchildren, it won’t be a question of how they will live in a world of nine billion people, but rather one of whether they will be living at all.
As we know empathy is a key to our successful relationships with people and it is equally critical to our relationship with our planet.
Therefore in this one world how we work, develop our economies, create our jobs, grow our food, make our energy and so keep peace and prosperity in and between our countries will all depend on sustainability.
As young leaders you will know that just as Copenhagen was not a success then Paris and Lima simply have to be.
Here in Ireland we are playing our part as part of the European Union.
And while we are happy to have overachieved in our first Kyoto Targets we are not blind to the size of the challenge we face in reaching our long-term objective of, by the year 2050, reducing our carbon in electricity, transport and the built environment by 80 per cent.
Already we are a world leader in carbon-efficient agriculture, our initiative called Origin Green establishing and promoting Ireland as a source and in time we hope, THE source of high-quality, safe and sustainable food.
The kind of food we can trust, the kind you will be happy to give your children and grandchildren.
And lucky they will be to learn from all of you who have come here to Ireland to discuss and examine all it means to want and create a better world.
Because in being here your bearings are good and right, your convictions generous, true and strong.
You have grown to adulthood in what’s been called ‘an age of anxiety’.
Yet your dream, the sheer power of it, remains intact.
Some of you here today will go on to lead organisations, corporations, countries.
And before I leave you let me share with you some advice that might be of use to you as you do.
And that is the need to include and to listen.
It’s the democratic imperative to practise politics and to be seen to, not at a remove, but as a central aspect of people’s lives and according to their high, personal standards.
It’s the human necessity to connect with people where they are and not where you hope or imagine them to be.
It’s the insight that comes when you stop take time to reflect on what you have done and what you will do now and next as a result.
And after that it’s the capacity to pick yourself up dust yourself down and find the sense and the guts to start all over again.
So I say to you in all your work for this ‘one world’ value the elements of friendship, kindness, compassion.
In your personal lives, install them, remember them, cherish them. And practise them.
You will be discussing many difficult global challenges over the coming days. Sometimes these can seem overwhelming, insurmountable, use these values to make a difference.
Your generation you can make the difference.