TÁNAISTE MARY Coughlan has warned against using the policies of the 1980s to deal with the economic downturn.
Opening the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, last night, she said Patrick MacGill would have agreed with the saying that generals always fought the last battle, not the next one. "We need to avoid that trap. Certain commentators are advising us to set our economic clocks back to the 1980s.
"This is not the 1980s. It would be a fatal mistake to think we are facing the same challenges. The economy is profoundly different now," she said.
Ms Coughlan said that the challenges might look similar but there was a need for a deeper analysis of the problems, not just an acceptance that the symptoms looked familiar.
She said that social partnership was also challenged with renewal. "Now, more than ever, we need a shared understanding across Government, employers, workers and wider society," she said.
Ms Coughlan and Minister of State Dr Martin Mansergh were among those to pay tribute to Donegal playwright Brian Friel whose work will be featured during this year's summer school.
The title of the school is A Feast of Friel: the Life and Work of Brian Friel. Director Joe Mulholland said it was decided this year to focus exclusively on Friel's work as a tribute to an outstanding Donegal man.
In the John Hume lecture at the school, Dr Mansergh questioned the constitutional provision giving the views of individuals and minority groups the same prominence as the major political parties in referendum campaigns.
"Whether or not we have overinterpreted the Supreme Court Crotty judgment of 1987, the McKenna judgment has had the effect of sidelining representative democracy for the duration of a campaign, and putting miscellaneous and mostly extra-parliamentary individuals and groups on a par with practically all of the political parties put together," he said.
"This gives such groups a constitutional right to equal prominence, a bonanza of heaven-sent publicity, and neutralises the weight and impact of any all-party consensus."
It was no wonder, he said, those seeking a political consensus for holding a referendum on the entirely different issue of children's rights were showing signs of having second thoughts.
Dr Mansergh said that in the matter of putting complex and essentially boring treaties to popular as opposed to parliamentary ratification . . . it was not self-evident that the decision of Ireland's European partners to opt for parliamentary ratification was wrong in principle, and that we alone were right, in yet another instance of Irish exceptionalism.
Dr Mansergh said the Taoiseach Brian Cowen, in consultation with partners, would resolve the problem created in the EU by Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
He said he never understood what French and German leaders such as Jacques Delors, Chancellor Kohl and President Mitterrand had done to Ireland, except help fund our infrastructure, agriculture, and peace and reconciliation to the tune of €60 billion to date; nor did he understand how "self-styled champions of Irish sovereignty and republicanism have adopted the Thatcherite critique as carried on in the language and mantras of certain British newspaper groups".