Humbert Summer School: Fairness and well-being is lacking as Ireland basks in new-found prosperity, according to Fr Seán Healy SMA, director of the justice commission of the Conference of Religious in Ireland.
Growing incomes have not led directly to increased happiness for all those who are better off. Growing competitiveness and individualism in society had made some people unhappy, he said.
He told the Humbert Summer School in Killala, Co Mayo at the weekend that modern, booming, Ireland is facing challenges which should be addressed comprehensively in the social partnership negotiations scheduled for later this year
Speaking on the topic "Fairness and Well-being in Ireland Today", Fr Healy said there are many people who have benefited little from Ireland's economic growth and who are at risk of poverty and exclusion for a variety of reasons.
In the forthcoming social partnership negotiations "the social partners and Government should seek to agree pathways and specific actions that would secure fairness and well-being for all in a land that now has more than sufficient resources to secure both".
Fr Healy said public finances were in "fantastic shape", unemployment was down dramatically and inflation very low. Last year, for the first time since 1871, the population of Ireland passed four million.
There was a tremendous growth of housing in Ireland. Of all the houses standing today in the Republic, more than half were built in the past ten years.
But on the other hand there was stress, anxiety, depression, violence and suicide.
The promotion of well-being should be at the heart of policymaking, he said.
Fr Healy pointed out that for a single person the poverty line in the Republic of Ireland in 2005 is €199.43.
While this amount is very basic, the lowest social welfare rate for a single person is only €148.80 in 2005 which is €50.63 a week short of the poverty line.
The most recent Central Statistics Office study shows that relative income poverty has risen during the recent years of major economic growth, 22.7 per cent of our population now lives in relative poverty.
Patsy McGarry, religious affairs correspondent of The Irish Times, told the summer school that the new papacy offers little hope of a revival in religious practice by Catholics; rather it will be "a period of stagnation".
"In Ireland and in Europe numbers attending weekly Mass will continue to fall, as will vocations, and a la carte Catholicism will continue to grow apace," he said during a seminar on Saturday on the topic, "Awaiting Vatican III".
Mr McGarry claimed many young people, even after more than a dozen years of Catholic education, at primary and secondary level, were ignorant of their faith. What religion is being taught, particularly at primary level, is often taught by teachers many of whom have lost the faith.
Mr McGarry added that a significant number of priests today seem themselves to have lost their faith. "They perform a job and have a career rather than a vocation. In their day to day lives they offer little evidence that they would live differently if working for some other corporation or institution".
Paying tribute to the clergy, Mr McGarry said but for the priests of Ireland, Catholicism here, in crisis as it is, would be in very much deeper trouble. "What loyalty to the institution remains is mainly because of the palpable decency of good priests at work among the people," he said.
Bernard Treacy OP, editor of Doctrine and Life, said huge effort and resources and marvellous creativity were put into the renewed catechetical programme for children introduced in the wake of Vatican 11 in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The energies expended on adult education were miniscule with the result that children came home from school talking about the faith in ways that were unfamiliar and for which parents were unprepared, he said.
"The result was that a whole generation of parents felt excluded from their children's religious education. A more collegial approach to religious education, an approach in which parents were recognised as partners, might be expected to bring about a deeper and more lasting appreciation of the Vatican II reforms."
Delivering the Bishop Stock Memorial Address, Andy Pollak, director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh, spoke of the remarkable growth of North-South co-operation. There are now over 700 civil servants from both jurisdictions working in the North-South area whereas six years ago there were probably fewer than 50.
Mr Pollak warned that miracles should not be expected from the peace process.
"It is going to be a long and slow and painstaking task to persuade our unionist fellow Irishmen and women that the people of the South no longer have any ambition to rule the North but only want what is best for the people of the island, North and South, whatever constitutional arrangement that involves."