President Mary McAleese has warned against Irish society ending up in a "cul-de-sac of complacent consumerism" as a result of rapid economic and social change experienced in recent years.
She said the country was at a crossroads where it could seek to become an equal society in which there was compassion for others, or a State wrapped in individualism and deaf to the voices of the excluded.
"It is simply unthinkable that our final destination could be the cul-de-sac of complacent consumerism when we are the first generation to have within our reach the great destination of an egalitarian Republic where the strong are driven by a restless and unselfish duty of care for the weak, and where every life is given the chance to fully blossom," Mrs McAleese said.
The President was speaking at a conference organised by Céifin centre in Co Clare, Filling the Vacuum. The conference, now in its eighth year, attracted widespread publicity last year following a speech by Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly, at which she spoke of the need to inject our changing society with a new value-system.
In her keynote speech, Mrs McAleese said our economic success had been accompanied by a "creeping malaise".
But she added that through debating these issues we could learn to "carry our shopping bags in one hand and our consciences in the other".
While we had the best educated young people in our history, with more money and freedom than any other generation, some had failed to see "the ugly wastefulness, the obvious dangers and sheer irresponsibility of binge-drinking and of experimenting with drugs".
Her speech was also optimistic in tone, pointing to the levels of volunteerism in the community among people of all ages.
She said that, despite cynicism, she found it hard to believe Ireland would ever settle on becoming a "greedy, selfish, soulless society, a place of strangers rather than neighbours, of individualised cocoons rather than community".
"There is an army of them [ volunteers] out there of all ages and backgrounds. The odd time they might make a local newspaper, more rarely still the national media, but their lived lives go largely unremarked and yet their side of the story, when told, puts quite a different complexion on modern Ireland and the state of its heart and soul," she said.
