The richest minority in Ireland have seen their wealth rise during the course of the economic crisis, the MacGill summer school has heard.

Kathleen Lynch, professor of equality studies at UCD, claimed that the rise in wealth of an already comfortable minority when so many others suffered was an indictment of the Irish model.

“We have a new kind of state where the citizen is being defined as a customer,” she said.

This was symbolic of a shift to the right which witnessed an attack on the voluntary sector and a progressive dismantling of the equality infrastructure in Ireland.

“Conservative nationalism and anti-intellectualism in Irish public life – religious, unions, businesses, professional groups, politicians have all worked to maintain inequality,” she said.

Geoff Meagher, national president of St Vincent de Paul, said demands for the services of his charity has grown.

“How stands the Republic when it comes to justice and equality? The answer clearly is not good. Worse still in the past number of years we have gone backwards,” he said.

“Our members are making around 8,000 home visits per week. .. It is also apparent to us that the challenges facing people have spread from those dependent on social welfare payment to those in low paid employment and those traditionally regarded as ‘middle class’ , people who pay for everything and get nothing.”

The political system needed overhauling, he said, and the eurozone needed a thorough reform which would halt governments from blaming outside agencies such as the ECB for their own difficulties.

Ivan Cooper, director of advocacy at The Wheel, complained of the concept of the citizen on the sideline and “learned helplessness”.

He said Ireland was governed very much from the top down and this fed into a sense of passivity.

Judge Michael Reilly, Inspector of Prisons, claimed the lack of care shown the vulnerable and the poor also extended to those in prisons.

He cited the case of Mountjoy jail which was constructed as a model prison and originally included in-cell sanitation, toilets and wash-hand basins. But he told the school these were removed in the 1860s and suggested the changed thinking was in part due to the idea that criminals would not know how to use such facilities.

“I have not found one person who has been improved by prison,” he said.

“On the contrary all available research shows that most people are damaged in one way or another by prison.”

He spoke of those particularly at risk within the prison system and cited the vulnerability of drug addicts, the uneducated, the marginalised, those with special needs and those from overseas or minority groups.

He stressed the persistence of courts sending petty criminals to prison.

“If you look at the majority of these people who commit these petty crimes you find that they have little or no education, are on the margins of society and probably have a drink and or a drug problem. If these people were from middle class society would that society rally around and try to get help for them,” he said. “I think it would.”

Norah Gibbons, chair of the new Child and Family Agency, said attitudes towards children have modified in recent decades, changing from a viewpoint of children as property to children as human beings.

“Since the McGill Summer School last year, four extremely important events have either changed, or have the potential to change, things in a positive way for children and young people in Ireland,” she said.

“This is what gives me hope. In Autumn 2012 the Irish people voted yes and inserted a new Article 42A into the Constitution concerning children and children’s rights.”

Society needs to establish a culture of listening to children and paying attention to their voices and lived experiences, she said. “This is perhaps where we failed most spectacularly in the past. There are new and good things on the horizon I believe because we cannot give up on children; we owe them their future.”