We are at the centre of an adventure in human information and communication greater than any other since the invention of the printing press. We will see our lives changed by that. We still have time to influence the process and I am glad to see that we in Ireland are doing this. In some cases this may merely involve drawing attention to what already exists. The entire Radio 1 service of RTE is now transmitted live over most of Europe on the Astra satellite. in North America we have a presence through the Galaxy satellite. There are several internet providers in Ireland and bulletin boards with community databases throughout the island. The magic of E-mail surmounts time and distance and cost. And the splendid and relatively recent technology of the World Wide Web means that local energies and powerful opportunities of access are being made available on the information highway.

The shadow of departure will never be lifted. The grief of seeing a child or other family member leave Ireland will always remain sharp and the absence will never be easy to bear. But we can make their lives easier if we use this new technology to bring the news from home. As a people, we are proud of our story-telling, our literature, our theatre, our ability to improvise with words. And there is a temptation to think that we put that at risk if we espouse these new forms of communication. In fact we can profoundly enrich the method of contact by the means of expression, and we can and should - as a people who have a painful historic experience of silence and absence - welcome and use the noise, the excitement, the speed of contact and the sheer exuberance of these new forms.

This is the second time I have addressed the two Houses of the Oireachtas as provided under the Constitution. I welcome the opportunity it has given me to highlight this important issue at a very relevant moment for us all. The men and women of our diaspora represent not simply a series of departures and losses. They remain, even while absent, a precious reflection of our own growth and change, a precious reminder of the many strands of identity which compose our story. They have come, either now or in the past, from Derry and Dublin and Cork and Belfast. They know the names of our townlands and villages. They remember our landscape or they have heard of it. They look to us anxiously to include them in our sense of ourselves and not to forget their contribution while we make our own. The debate about how best to engage their contribution with our own has many aspects and offers opportunities for new structures and increased contact.

If I have been able to add something to this process of reflection and to encourage a more practical expression of the concerns we share about our sense of ourselves at home and abroad then I am grateful to have had your attention here today. Finally, I know this Oireachtas will agree with me that the truest way of cherishing our diaspora is to offer them, at all times, the reality of this island as a place of peace where the many diverse traditions in which so many of them have their origins, their memories, their hopes are bound together in tolerance and understanding.