Recovery must focus on 'common good' -- Higgins
Ireland's economic recovery needs to build on a return to the "shared common good" if we are to avoid falling back into the cycle that led to credit boom, President Michael D Higgins has said.
Opening the Trinity Economic Forum last night, Mr Higgins said that, to give some support to the Taoiseach's comments in Davos last week, "mad borrowing" at home was the cause of our economic problems.
"We know that the present economic morass through which we are struggling did not come about by accident," he said.
"We know it came about because of a failed paradigm of economic policy, undeclared assumptions, skewed values, and the growth of a culture where our assets were valued and utilised on purely material considerations."
Mr Higgins said the post-boom society needed to have an "active, inclusive citizenship"
He said the country needed to "rebuild a sense of trust and community so that we can build a new economy predicated on a shared common good, rather than speculative aspirations for individual aggrandisement far removed from the real economy".
Mr Higgins said that "material considerations" would have to go if the country was to fully recover.
- Peter Flanagan
Irish Independent
