A CALL for a new type of leadership was made by priest and social commentator Harry Bohan at the Céifin conference which opened in Clare yesterday.He said the question of leadership was one of the most critical facing society at this time of great upheaval.
Fr Bohan said there was a need to move away from a command type of leadership to a more participative model, underpinned by honesty and integrity.
“The recovery that’s needed cannot be just a repetition of the past . . . renewed community has to be at the centre of our recovery. In many ways the recovery has to start from the ground and grow.”
This would require people to take responsibility. “Going along with the prevailing culture sometimes can exonerate people from taking responsibility.”
Fr Bohan was speaking at the 12th annual conference organised by the Clare-based body he founded to encourage debate on social change issues. Several hundred people gathered in Ennis for the two-day conference.
The conference later heard criticism of economist David McWilliams by fellow economist Jim Power.
The Friends First economist referred to the weekend revelation by McWilliams that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan had held a private meeting with him (McWilliams) at his home.
Mr Power said he respected the Minister who had been exposed to “an incredibly low trick”.
“The notion that a private meeting he had with David McWilliams would hit the newspapers last Saturday in that sort of manner I found personally despicable,” he said.
Mr Power also said political correctness had not served us well, “particularly in relation to areas like inward migration”.
He said: “We opened up our borders, we took in thousands of workers from eastern Europe particularly . . . anybody that questioned it was deemed racist or whatever. Political correctness had totally taken over.”
Mr Power said these workers fuelled the building boom at a time when we should have been targeting other employment sectors.
“We should have been looking at education. We should have been looking at RD. We should have been looking at the IT industry. We should have been looking at the medical professions. We should have been looking at food technology.”
Mr Power predicted “huge anger” from the public over cuts yet to come, based on the fury already expressed over threats to child benefit.
A 20 per cent cut in child benefit would save the exchequer €500 million but it was a drop in the ocean when one considered that it cost €480 million a week to run the country.
“You can just imagine the problems we are going to have over the next two or three years in taking that sort of money out of the economy. It is going to create huge anger, huge bitterness, huge divisiveness in society. But is there an option? I don’t believe there is.”
The conference was also told that cutting services such as healthcare is bad economics and counterproductive.
Ray Kinsella, professor of banking and financial services at UCD, said he rejected the idea that cuts were the way forward in healthcare.
“It’s certainly leading to extraordinary incidents of psychosocial stress,” he said.
Many people taking their own lives in recent times had no record of psychiatric illness but they were desperate and could find no way out.
He said he wanted to challenge the orthodoxy that cuts were the only solution: “There is a better way than cuts.”
Prof Kinsella said we were unable to get out of this crisis because our existing political framework was obsolete and incapable of reform; our banking system was “malign”; and we could not build a new economic order on a failed political paralysis.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to us or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that we agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
SIC: IT