Sir, – President Michael D Higgins was right to argue (Opinion & Analysis, April 2nd) that “we now have a generational opportunity to ask probing questions about the type of society we wish to build together, and the type of public world we wish to share with one another and with future generations”.
His ethics initiative, aiming to place citizens at the centre of the debate about the future of our society is both topical, timely and welcome. For the development model Ireland chose during the Celtic Tiger era has been shown to be fundamentally flawed – yet to date no alternative vision for a fair and sustainable future for our country has emerged.
Our recent history has shown that Ireland’s problems cannot be solved through a “laissez-faire” approach to public policy, and it has also highlighted the fact that our future is intrinsically linked to decisions (or non-decisions, as the case may be) of the wider international community. But we have yet to develop a plan on how to manage the challenges arising from this new awareness.
The President’s call for a conversation about our values as a nation could not be more timely. Our citizens feel less empowered than ever before, and our public goods have been damaged by greed, breach of trust and by global forces of enormous strength. It is not a good time in which to be rudderless.
Realising this, our colleagues at the United Nations have spent much of the last two years asking every country to undertake discussions about national values and national priorities. It has asked citizens, companies and governments to come up with visions of “the world we want”, to help set the agenda for the global community in the coming decades.
On the back of global UN summits of the past decade, the member countries of the UN – including Ireland – have decided to develop a set of global goals to address the world’s most pressing issues in the coming 15 years, goals that will set the framework for national and international decisions on education, equality, democracy, jobs and the environment and which could end up becoming a sort of second-level constitution for our country.
If we seize the opportunity that the President is offering us to rethink who we are and what our values as a nation are, and ought to be, then we will be all the stronger for it, and all the better able to cope with the challenges associated with being a small country in such an interdependent and volatile world. Yours, etc,
HANS ZOMER,
Director,
Dóchas,
Baggot Court,
Dublin 2