The President has said that it is impossible to comprehend the minds of those responsible for the Beslan atrocity in Russia.
"May God forgive them," Mrs McAleese said in north-east Co Galway yesterday during an address to secondary school pupils at the Glenamaddy Community School. It was heartbreaking to see the lives of so many young children ruined, "children who are our hope and our future".
It was both pitiable and dreadful to think there were such people who believed they could further their case by committing such an act, she said. It was impossible to comprehend such a thought process, Mrs McAleese continued, expressing her horror and sorrow at the deaths of more than 335 adults and children in the attack on the school in North Ossetia 10 days ago.
The President expressed the hope that no community would ever be challenged with such an event again.
A tribute to the President's own role in helping to heal the scars of conflict was paid by one of the Glenamaddy school pupils, Sarah Finnegan (17), when she thanked her and her husband, Mr Martin McAleese, for the "quiet diplomacy" which they had exercised over the past few years in "bridging the gulf" between the two communities in Northern Ireland.
Earlier, during a series of engagements in north-east Co Galway, the President said that Ireland had the "brainpower" to become one of the best technology economies in the world. She made the comments after opening a new community information technology centre in Athenry.
