From the Irish Catholic, 5 July 2007:

President Mary McAleese has paid tribute to the input of the Dominican Order in educating generations of Irish people.

Speaking at a special reception at Áras an Uachtaráin to mark 800 years of the Dominicans the President referred to her own education by the Dominican Sisters in Belfast.  “We probably were not deeply aware of it back in our schooldays but ours was a generation like no other that had gone before – for the world was opening up to women and women to the world in ways that simply had not been available to our mothers.  College education, jobs, membership of professions – these things became our choice and our chance.  In St Dominic’s the ambition to be women whose contributions would extend beyond the domestic sphere was nurtured and encouraged.”

The President said that “if, in this 800th anniversary year, they [the Dominicans], like many orders and congregations, are feeling a bit lost as vocations all but disappear, in and through our lives they can see the clear evidence of a job well done, a torch handed seamlessly on.”