Ireland is in danger of importing the negative effects which secularisation has had on US society, according to the presidential candidate Dana (Mrs Rosemary Scallon).
Speaking on Teilifis na Gaeilge last night, she said the separation of God and state in America has had detrimental effects, yet Irish society appeared to be heading in the same direction.
People should ensure that the person for whom they voted shared "the common vision that you want in Ireland, so that when our generation is gone our children and their children are going to have as beautiful a country to grow up in and live in and be as safe in as we did."
Speaking in English on TnaG's weekly current affairs programme, Cead Cainte, Dana said: "In America they are about 30 years down the road from where we are today and they are trying to get back to where we are today, and it seems we are on a skateboard trying to get where they are. That's why I say we need to stop and we need to look ahead to where we are going."
She said US authorities had now begun teaching sexual abstinence in schools because of the failure of past policies. "They have had sex education and free condoms in schools for the past 30 years, more or less, and the rate of births to under-age mothers - to children as young as 11 - has quadrupled. It is costing the American taxpayer so much money in pre-natal, birth and welfare that they feel the only answer is to teach abstinence.
"They have secularised America," she went on. Church and state were so separated that God could not be mentioned in school, she maintained, and prayer in schools was also against the law.
She again rejected suggestions on the programme that she was backed by various Christian groups. A Dublin solicitor, Mr T.C.G. O'Mahony of the Christian Community Alliance, said his group had persuaded Dana to run and was now "looking to build co-operation between prayer groups, morality groups and Christian political groups and community groups" to support her. They had raised some money which was in the bank until funding was needed by the campaign.
He was doing this to try to roll back the liberal agenda. When Mrs Robinson was elected, Mr O'Mahony felt it was "the opening of the sluice gates to the liberal agenda and I don't think I was far wrong. I felt it would be good to try and get someone who would close the gates and bring us back to God again."
Dana said she welcomed all support "as long as everyone understands at the end of the day the people who are closest to me and are in control of where we are going are basically my family and myself. I don't want to be taken into a corner by one group or another but I welcome all support.
"I am non-party, I have cross-party support, I have support from every single party in this country and from organisations that are getting the strength to come and stand beside me."
She did not have a campaign machine or funding such as political parties had, she maintained, but all kinds of individuals were "coming out of the woodwork" to support her. "I welcome support but they have to know that they are not in the guiding body or a part of the main body around me."
She warned people to be careful about whom they chose as President. "I don't even care if it's not me, but choose somebody that shares the common vision that you want in Ireland."