Market forces cannot be allowed cotninue to dictate in areas such as the family, handing over our children to be reared and our elderly to be cared for, Clare priest Fr Harry Bohan has said.
The role of families and community in the well-being of Irish people was a crucial topic, he said.
Fr Bohan, chairman of the Céifin Centre for Values-led Change, based at Ennis, said: "The greatest revolution to have taken place in Ireland in the past decade is in these areas.
"You switch on your radio for Morning Irelandor Drive Timeand you hear what has now become almost a daily reality: another report of a brutal killing - in the next estate, or in your own parish. You attend the funeral of a young person who has died in a road traffic accident, or whose death was self-inflicted, and you watch the tears flowing at the graveside."
All who are concerned ought to be shouting about what is happening in Ireland today, he said, in a statement on this year's Céifin conference. He recalled a recent Céifin student conference in Galway, attended by 260 young people. "One of their own had just committed suicide, another student had been murdered, and a third past student (who had been one of the founders of the Céifin student conference) had been tragically killed in a recent road accident."
This social revolution and its effects will be a central theme at this year's Céifin conference on November 6th and 7th in Ennis. Its theme is Tracking the Tiger - a Decade of Change. Speakers include Nuala O'Loan, Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Kathleen O'Toole, chief inspector of the Garda Síochána Inspectorate, SeáLove of Amnesty International, Prof Tom Collins of NUI Maynooth, the Catholic Bishop of Limerick Dr Donal Murray, cardiac surgeon Maurice Nelligan, and journalists John Waters, Paul Tansey and Dearbhail McDonald.
