On behalf of the College, it’s my pleasure to welcome you all to this wonderful exhibition and this very special evening. Oscar Wilde is not a Trinity graduate, though we sometimes forget that. He was a Trinity student, and a very glittering one – he came first in Classics in his first year, and won a Foundation Scholarship and the Berkeley Gold Medal for Greek in his second. Apparently in later years he would repeatedly pawn and redeem that Medal. Not the least interesting angle of that anecdote is that students in those days won solid gold medals!

It’s my very great pleasure to welcome you to the Museum Building for this exceptional event. This is the second time this year that Canada’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, has visited Ireland. She was here during the summer with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and they took part in a roundtable hosted by the Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald T.D. which covered Sustainability & Climate Finance. It is a measure of Minister McKenna’s deep commitment to engaging on climate action that she has returned for this Leadership Seminar. Trinity is honoured to be hosting this Seminar and I know how excited our students are to have Minister McKenna lead them in debate on such vital issues for our planet’s future.

It’s an enormous pleasure to be here on this visit to UAE as Provost leading Trinity team on a wide set of engagements in the Middle-East and the Gulf region.

Today’s speaker continues in the tradition that has developed. Mario Draghi is, of course, the President of the European Central Bank, a role he has held since 2011; previously he was Governor of the Bank of Italy. As such, he has never been out of the news this past decade; he is among the world’s most important leaders, and it’s an absolute honour to welcome him here today. I thank the Central Bank of Ireland and European Central Bank teams for collaborating so closely with the Trinity team, to make this visit happen. And I thank Mario Draghi for making the time. I know that he is to be honoured later by an award from our Student Debating Society, the University Philosophical Society. It’s tremendously exciting for students and staff to welcome Mr Draghi to campus and we’re delighted also that we can open this important lecture to the wider public.

It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Trinity at this, the start of your induction week. I look forward to meeting you all personally, and to engaging with you over the year. There are, I think, some 28 of you here today, hailing from different Schools and disciplines, and at different stages in your careers. What you have in common is that this is your first introduction to Trinity – at least as staff members.