Learn lessons from the past to build new Republic

Posted on July 22, 2009 at 11:16 AM

Yesterday evening the Labour Leader, Eamon Gilmore TD, spoke at the MacGill Summer School about how we must learn the lessons of the past to build a new Republic.

Eamon's contribution was hard hitting and critical of the Government but it also charted the way forward for economic recovery.

"We have an economic crisis, but it is part of a political and social crisis. The model that drove us since the late 1950s has been under pressure for some years. We built a strong open, exporting economy, but it was hi-jacked by property developers and speculators.

"We embraced the European Union, but we have failed to convince our people of the merits of that membership. We opened up society, and gave people greater freedom, but we have seen a coarsening of society in the wave of crime and death driven by drug crime.

"Too often, our people were treated as economic units, not as members of a society, - subjected to poor planning, high house prices, inadequate services, and now left with the bill."

Summing up Eamon said that we are living through dark and difficult times.

"We are living though a period which is visiting pain on those who deserve no share of it. We have difficult days ahead. And yet, there is still the potential. There is still the opportunity, that we will sit in Glenties a decade, or two decades from now, and say, that this was the hour when we began to build a New Republic."

You can read Eamon's full speech in our media centre.

 

 

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