President joins in birthday celebrations

***The year in review***

There was much to celebrate in East Clare this year with not only two Scariff-based organisations reaching milestone birthdays but also with the visit of President Michael D Higgins to mark these occasions.

The Irish Seed Savers’ Association (ISSA) in Scariff celebrated its 21st birthday this year and was delighted to welcome President Higgins and his wife Sabine to open their new seed bank facility – the first gene bank of its kind in the country, in June.
Speaking at the time, director of the ISSA and former CEO of Greenpeace Ireland, Claire O’Grady Walsh commented, “What a hopeful thing to do to open a bank in 2012 – a proper bank – a seed bank and what an honour to have a poet and a dreamer as our President”.
When officially opening the ISSA’s new seed bank, President Higgins remarked, “Your work is important as it is regrettably rare in this country, with the numbers involved in the work of seed saving in Ireland down to a mere handful with the majority of these known to be involved with your association either now or at one time. We must do all we can to protect our heritage, all aspects of our heritage, to ensure that future generations are imbued with both a keen understanding of its significance and a passionate sense of custodianship of something special and irreplaceable. I wish you well in all that you do to protect this vital part of that heritage”.
President Higgins also attended the East Clare Co-op in Scariff to officially mark the 25th birthday of the cooperative.
Quoting the United Nations secretary general, Ban-Ki-Moon, the President stressed to the large gathering present in Scariff on June 14 last that “co-operatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility”.
The co-op was founded in September 1987 as the Coleen Bridge Co-operative with the aim of creating a Steiner based primary school, now an independent initiative and is joined by a secondary school and a preschool. 
A few years later, in 1991 the East Clare Community Cooperative established itself as an independent co-operative with a focus on training, local capacity building and enterprise support for environmentally sustainable social and business initiatives. 
“You are to be congratulated for your foresight in those early years and for your fortitude over these 25 years, some of which, more recently, have been extremely challenging. The values of the co-operative movement are now critical in overcoming these difficult economic times and those in the cooperative movement can now be leaders in the economic and social transformation we are seeking,” President Higgins said at the event.  
Before he departed President Higgins concluded that the community co-op’s vision, drive and tenacity has served their community well.