East meets West - A Clash of Cultures?

Contemporary and Brehon Perspectives

Director: Senator Ivana Bacik

Friday 2nd May 2008

7.00 pm Registration
Administration Office, Burren College of Art

7.15 pm Opening Reception and Supper
Main Hall, Newtown Castle

8.00 pm A Brief Brehon Welcome and
Message of Greeting from President McAleese
Professor Donnchadh Ó Corráin, UCC

8.15 pm The EU and the East
Commissioner Charlie McCreevy,
European Commissioner for the Internal Market & Services
Dr. John Fingleton, Chief Executive, Office of Fair Trading, UK

10.00 pm Open Forum
Burren Coast Hotel Bar

Saturday 3rd May 2008

7.30 am Michael Greene’s Morning Walk
Led by Jim Hyland, local historian

10.00 am The Binchy Memorial Lecture
Irish Law and the outside world: how much is Irish, how much Christian, how much Jewish?
Professor Donnchadh Ó Corráin, UCC

10.30 am Coffee

11.00 am How East meets the West – Different Perspectives
Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev, Economist and Editor, Business and Finance Magazine
Dr. Shaheed Satardien, Chair of the European Muslim Council for Justice, Peace and Equality
Lara Marlowe, Paris Correspondent, Irish Times (former Time Magazine Beirut correspondent and Iraq war reporter)

1.00 pm Lunch

2.15 pm Keynote Address – Resolving the Cultural Divide
John Hume, 1998 Nobel Peace Prize winner, former MEP
and Leader of the SDLP, Northern Ireland
Maurice Hayes, Chair, National Forum on Europe
John O’Shea, Founder & CEO of GOAL

3.00 pm Open Forum

4.00 pm Field Trip Led by Tony Kirby

6.00 pm Return to Ballyvaughan

8.30 pm Conference Dinner
The Burren Coast Hotel

Sunday 4th May 2008

10.00 am A Brehon Law Perspective
Peoples in Contact: some medieval Irish and Welsh
legal comment
Dr. Bronagh Ni Chonaill, University of Glasgow

10.30 am Perspective from the Judiciary
Judge Roderick Murphy, High Court

11.00 am Coffee

11.15 am East v. West – Cultural Connections
Mary Banotti, MEP for Dublin 1984-2004; President,
Irish Centre for Parentally Abducted Children
Conor O’Clery, former Foreign Correspondent, Irish Times (posts included Moscow, Washington and Beijing)
Quentin Peel, Foreign Editor, Financial Times

12.45 pm Concluding Remarks
Introduction of Director and Theme for 2009

1.30 pm Lunch

3.00 pm Field Trip
Led by Tony Kirby, leaving from the village

6.30pm Return to Ballyvaughan