Archbishop of Dublin Dr Diarmuid Martin has described the Irish health system as an example of the uneven distribution of economic growth and wealth in a globalised world.
He told a Berlin conference attended by Chancellor Merkel and former chancellor Helmut Kohl that free market regulation had its place, particularly in ensuring efficiency, but not if it reduces people solely to their economic value as workers and consumers.
"In many ways, Ireland finds itself in a leading position in Europe. But Ireland falls back when one looks at healthcare," said Archbishop Martin in fluent German to a conference entitled "The Common Good in a Globalised World", organised by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin.
"However important the market may be, it is merely a means for channelling human ability.... and creativity, the driving force of any economy."
Archbishop Martin cited Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus ("100th Year"), which describes the free market as the "most effective way" of satisfying needs. However, not every human need can be bought and sold, noted the pope.
"An economy that leaves large parts of its population at the periphery is precisely for this reason less fair and less effective and thus more fragile," added Archbishop Martin.
"The concept of social justice has not become meaningless in a globalised world."
Another Irish speaker at the conference was Peter Sutherland, the former EU commissioner and former director general of the World Trade Organisation, now chairman of BP.
He argued that properly-managed globalisation improves people's lives and reduces the gap between rich and poor. "The billion people, largely in Asia, that have escaped from extreme poverty in the last 15 years testifies to this," he said.
Mr Sutherland described as a "delusion" the current temptation, in the wake of the credit crunch and high-profile fraud cases, to push for greater regulation and protectionism.
"Markets are part of the solution, not part of the problem.
"Markets, in fact, are essential to a just society [ and] fundamental to building the prosperity needed for freedom to be meaningful."
Ms Merkel suggested that a globalised world needed common standards, such as for protection of social standards and the environment.
"Free-wheeling standards are just as distortive to competition as having no standards," she said.
