A NATIONAL debate is needed on the importance of spending more time with people, the director of the homeless service Trust, Alice Leahy, said yesterday.
She called for a "complete rethink" about the way society is organised "to make more time for people, more time to be with our families and more caring time for everyone who comes into contact with State services".
Ms Leahy was speaking at the launch of her book Wasting Time With People? in Dublin last night.
It includes essays from more than 70 people on the theme of making time for others. Contributors include the writer Maeve Binchy; Supreme Court judge Susan Denham; A&E consultant Patrick Plunkett; tailor Louis Copeland; RTÉ's Áine Lawlor; Mountjoy Governor John Lonergan; and Garda Ombudsman Commission member Conor Brady.
Ms Leahy said the book would be "a tremendous success" if it kick-started a debate about why we are so "time poor" at a time of great material success. "In Trust we meet the casualties, those who cannot fit in or keep up, and we know from our experience there is no hope of ever creating a society that will be a welcoming place for the outsider unless we can make time for others, both in our families and communities," she said.
At another book launch yesterday, Jesuit priest and social campaigner Fr Peter McVerry said Christian churches should work for a social revolution and re- examine their priorities.
"The Church must take on a much greater role in promoting social justice, in critiquing what is happening in our society and in challenging political, social and economic policies that increase the inequalities," Fr McVerry said.
"In Ireland at moment we talk a great deal of the need to tighten our belts and the need for pay moderation, when at the very same time those who are on the very highest salaries have already accepted very significant pay rises," Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh, said at the launch.
In his latest book, entitled Jesus: social revolutionary?, Fr McVerry applied the scriptures to modern Ireland, Dr Walsh noted.