Take the shoes from off your feet for the place whereon you stand is Holy Ground.

Midwives stand on the holiest ground of all. They stand at the very point where God is renewing humankind.

Today you have come to this holy place to celebrate 60 years of the Royal College of Midwives operating with its own regional board in our community.

Today we mark a most significant milestone in the journey - a journey which has enabled the development of skill and knowledge whilst maintaining that most essential element in human history and existence - compassion and caring for one’s neighbour.

You know your own story better than I do - but I have benefited from having to encounter it in preparation for this service. Your formal history goes back to 1881 when the Midwives Institute was established to ensure that maternity care would be provided by trained and registered midwives. Your profession produced redoubtable women like Dame Rosalind Paget and Zepherina Vietch who led the campaigning that resulted in the English Midwives Act of 1902. When Northern Ireland was established in 1922 your organisation helped ensure that an equivalent act was introduced for this community.

The Midwives Institute evolved and that was recognised by the granting of the Royal Charter to the College of Midwives in 1947. The Northern Ireland board office of the College was opened in 1985 to provide advice and support to members here.

Your voice has been heard by service users, by government at both local and national level, by service providers and commissioners as you have sought to ensure the highest quality of maternity care for the women and children of Northern Ireland. You leadership has included many conscientious and courageous people - some of whom are here today - and several of your colleagues have been honoured by the College - women like Dame Mary Uprichard, Liz Duffin and Eunice Foster who have served as vice-presidents of the RCM. And I share your happiness that Ruth Clarke from the Royal Jubilee Maternity Service was made an Honorary Fellow at your annual conference a couple of weeks ago.

Your record of service to this community includes the blitz of this city and the thirty years of the troubles in our community. Throughout periods of difficulty and periods of calm your members have continued to provide the best service you possibly could - and for that we are indeed indebted to you.

The issues you face are set by a society in flux as never before - and it is a society which is not always making a positive contribution towards the area in which you serve.

You have the ethical dilemma of whether or not pregnancies should be terminated; of fertility treatment and the ethical issues which surround that; of drug and solvent abuse by mothers and the effects of that on children as yet unborn. The presence of domestic violence - not always confined to lower income groups, or to wives, pose a further dilemma for you as to the nature of your response.

The report from the Confidential Enquiry Into Maternal and Infant Death - has brought forward another most difficult issue which needs to be faced by government, by health funders and requires further research and preventative action. The awareness that suicide is now the number one cause of maternal death - and that there is no dedicated unit on this island for mothers and babies when the mother has a mental health problem, surely demands a major, significant cross -border effort, which should take precedence over any other cause for inter-government concern and support which I can think of.

I know and applaud the fact that the Royal College has not confined its efforts to these islands. Your work with midwifery colleagues around the world and especially in those countries with scant resources is most commendable. It gives you an insight and a voice. It is not for nothing that your Safe Motherhood Initiative in the developing world and other work has resulted in your College’s recognition as a World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre and that you have close and effective links with UNICEF.

I can think of few other professionals which stand on such holy ground as you do. I met a man once who led workshops on spirituality. He did so through getting people to participate in carving and in turning wood on lathes. He stressed to the workshop participants that in doing so they would see something unique in creation. They would be the first person to see the new wood in a carving or in a turning. Each shaving or piece of wood discarded revealed something new, something made by God which no human person had actually seen before.

Thinking about this service brought that memory out of the lesser active part of my memory bank. But that is what you profession does. You are literally at the heartbeat of humanity. You care for the child before it is born and your hands may be the first contact with humanity that the child makes apart from its mother. You are the midwives to God’s creation. You stand where practical skills, professional knowledge, human compassion, emotion and ethics fuse together.

The reading from the Jewish scriptures reminded us today that there is in the Judaeo-Christian tradition a fundamental telling about and esteem of the importance of child birth. The births of Moses and Samuel are recorded in detail, just as are the births of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.

In the birth of Christ, we are reminded of the status God gives to childhood. In Christ God came as a human child. And in turn, Jesus gathered the children in his arms and said - of such is the kingdom of God. You can tell a lot about the values of a society by the way in which it treats its children and in the way in which it cares for its newly-born. Children are God’s way of renewing his creation. And in a part of the world, like this island, where natural material resources are scant, we have to recognise as never before that children are our greatest asset. They are God’s gift to us in themselves, and they are God’s charge to us, to guide their well being and their future.

Long may you give your voice to the voiceless. Yours is a voice based on skill, knowledge, service and compassion. Long may your organisation campaign and lobby for necessary improvements in child-centred issues. Through your professionalism and your compassion you have more than earned the right to do so. And in God’s name, if you do not speak from your experience, who then can?

I say to you, in God’s name, journey on together because the causes which unite you are greater than the ethical dilemmas which could divide you. May your continue to be a blessing on our society, and may God continue to bless each one of you, wherever you stand on that holy ground which is so particularly identified with your calling and your College.