The Government together with private companies needs to foster research on family and community breakdown, a Clare-based sociologist believes.
Father Harry Bohan, chairman of the Shannon-based Rural Resource Development agency, said there had been no major study of family structures in the State since the 1930s when two US scholars carried out research on a community in Corofin in north Clare. Since then, in a process that began over the past 40 years, the State has been transformed from being "a kind of backwater on the edge of the world economy to being at the heart of the communications technology world". In the 1990s the process accelerated as the new technology-based economy became established. However, the break
down of family and community structures, Father Bohan believes, threatens to erode this success. The effect on family and community life as expressed by the rise in depression and adolescent suicide was not being recognised, Father Bohan said, and the question of who was rearing the next generation had to be answered.
"We have become a work-friendly society but not a family-friendly society.
"People are much more on their own."
The basic requirement for building an economy was people and these people came from families and communities. "If we do not look after family and community life, then we will kill the goose that laid the golden egg."
He said the Government and corporations had a duty to foster community life and ultimately it was in their interest. Organisations would have no meaning without the people for whom they exist and this theme has formed part of the research into the state of family life carried out by Rural Resource Development. "We have been meeting with a number of corporations. We have formed a network and we meet every three months."
He said corporations and institutions needed to work in partnership with people and "to effectively reconstruct the society that is emerging".
The Rural Resource Development's annual conference will take place in Ennis from next Wednesday to Friday. With the theme "Redefining Roles and Relationships", it will examine the link between work and lifestyles and from where values are coming. Among the speakers from the US are Mr Robert E. Lane, professor of political science at Yale, and Mr Bill Paul Collins an associate professor of Samford University.
Other experts in the field who will speak are Kate O Dubhchair, Gearoid O Tuathaigh, Maureen Gaffney, Kathleen Lynch, Father Sean McDonagh and Dr Colum Kenny. Conference details are available at 061-361144.