Ireland's growing affluence has numbed and dulled society's vision of the common good, a campaigner for the homeless warned today.
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy said wealth has brought many good things to the country with new industries, houses, cars and roads sprouting up amid growing hopes and confidence.
But the founder of Focus Ireland, the organisation for the homeless, said the downside could be seen in soaring property prices, rip-off retailers, spiralling personal debts and huge pressure on people to keep up.
"Pressure and problems with childcare, long commutes, two-job families, lack of quality time, new forms of inequality, exclusion and marginalisation," she said were issues afflicting the country.
"Unfortunately we have seen affluence as an end in itself, not as a means to an end and it has numbed and dulled our vision of the common good.
"It has numbed our concern for each other and dulled our ability to see luxuries as luxuries. So the second house and the faster car and the second holiday, and the third bathroom, at any cost, are the new badges of progress, which are necessary to quench a thirst that wasn't there 20 years ago."
The advocate for the poor told the Magill Summer School in Donegal said the Government has abandoned its historic commitment to providing housing for those who cannot buy their own during its most wealthy time.
"Households on waiting lists have more than doubled from 19,376 in 1989, to 43,684 in 2005. Social housing is not welcomed in many areas. Developers don't want social housing, neither do local residents because they are all afraid the value of their property will decrease," she said.
Sr Kennedy
The audience heard society has not helped young people to ensure they become active citizens. "Consumerism is filling the gap left by the excessive pursuit of economic success and affluence," she said.
Sr Kennedy said many people have been left behind in Ireland's new affluent society. She warned the gap between the poor and the wealthy had widened and poorer people feel more stigmatised because they see themselves as failures, non-productive and losers in a society where economic success is so venerated.
"Poverty is always hard and nasty. But poverty in the midst of plenty is much harder to bear and poorer people feel more excluded than ever in the midst of what seems to be effortless accumulation of things. The pressure to keep up and to have more can be seen at all levels of society," she said.
Sr Kennedy said the country was failing to give the right to live a full and normal family life to many of its migrant labour force.
"Immigration is seen in Ireland as essential to economic growth yet our policies based on temporary permission to stay, discretionary and limited family reunification polices and limited integration policies all show that economic interest is dictating our immigration policy. Immigrants are seen as economic units and not as human beings, as part of families in affluent Ireland," she said.
The audience heard the challenge was to create a more humane society replacing consumerism with caring values. "A humane society is one that distributes the goods of society in a way that gives fair access to health, education, housing and transport. Consumerism and the common good are not compatible," she said.
PA