The President, Mrs McAleese, last night told Australian donors that their contributions helped to build up the self-confidence of the people of Northern Ireland.
In an impassioned speech to an Australian Ireland Fund dinner in Sydney Opera House, Mrs McAleese said that it was a powerful thing for people to see that Australians cared about those in the North, when very often they did not even care for each other.
She had seen the results of their work, seen it transform individuals and whole communities.
"It is remarkable that so many of you dare to care so deeply," she said.
Mrs McAleese told her audience that the Ireland Fund was especially important in Northern Ireland, because the process of peace and reconciliation was not a work of weeks or months, but more like generations.
The fund was a vital and necessary part of bringing people together, because "hatred flourishes where the fabric of civil society is so fragmented".
The President said that for Ireland to move on, there had to be a reinvigoration, recalibration and reimagining of the Ireland of the future.
Earlier, in an address to the Lansdowne Club, an Irish-Australian business association, Mrs McAleese spoke of the huge changes in the Irish economy in the last decade.
She also spoke of Ireland as a country which has moved beyond mass emigration.
Tomorrow she will meet Irish backpackers after morning Mass in Bondi and will also be guest of honour at Sydney's St Patrick's Day parade.
