There are no instant solutions or magic turning points in the patient, "step by step" building of peace, the President, Mrs McAleese, said last night.
Speaking in Houston on the third day of her Texas visit, the President recalled George Bernard Shaw's words that "peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous". She was addressing students and staff at the Baker Institute in Rice University on "Conflict resolution and the peace process in Northern Ireland".
She was due later to have a private dinner with the institute's founder, the former Secretary of State, Mr James Baker.
The transformation had been brought about in Ireland by the Good Friday agreement, a historic breakthrough that "created the space in which peace can breathe, and where, in turn the people of Northern Ireland can become accustomed to breathing the air of peace", the President said.
But the agreement was premised on the idea that "there could be no winners or losers. All sides were required to make significant compromises."
Mrs McAleese spoke of "the multifaceted nature of identity" and the need to "bring in from the cold those who through their pursuit of violence had excluded themselves from the process of dialogue" to make talks genuinely inclusive.
Out of such talks, she said, came institutions reflecting the differing aspects of the relation ships on the islands of Ireland and Britain, bodies like Intertrade Ireland, through which "even mundane measures to promote co-operation" contributed to rooting the peace more deeply.
The President also spoke of Ireland's "responsibility" to contribute to international peacekeeping, arising in part out of the contributions made by others such as the US to our own peace process. And she thanked the new US administration for maintaining the level of interest and commitment to the process.
At a reception for 250 members of the Irish community, hosted by Bord Failte, there were loud "yeehaws" when the President suggested an Irishman had designed the cowboy boot.
She also spoke of the Irish "knack of showing up in a place just as it is about to combust. It gave them plenty of opportunity to shine". Of Ireland's current transformation, President McAleese said, to roars of delight from a roomful of what she deemed "Ireland's unpaid ambassadors", that "the best is yet to come".
