President Higgins highlights the People’s Conversation in address on citizenship and ethics

President Higgins has delivered an address at The Wheel’s Annual Conference, in which he highlighted The People’s Conversation as playing a vital role in deepening and broadening the discussion on what type of Ireland we want to live in. The People’s Conversation is an initiative of The Wheel to “rethinking citizenship for 2016”.

Addressing delegates the President said: “Initiatives such as the People’s Conversation play an increasingly vital role as we continue our advocacy towards achieving an inclusive economy, providing an opportunity for diverse groups to come together and explore and examine our social contracts and political paradigms.”

Over the past year The People’s Conversation has seen diverse groups of people meeting for open and challenging discussion on values and citizens’ expectation of themselves and each other. The common themes and new ideas emerging from the conversations are being shaped into a new vision for active citizenship and empowered communities.

President Higgins added: “Fundamental to the process of interrogation of values are questions of governance and the related questions which we may ask in this decade of commemoration as to whether, in our political independence, we have lived up to the ideals articulated during the formation of the Irish Republic.”

The Wheel has partnered with a wide range of civil society organisations to host conversation groups that will feed in to the creation of a new vision for citizenship for 21st century Ireland, with the guidance of a Reference Board drawn from senior figures in civil society, business, media and elsewhere. This vision will contain practical recommendations for change and will be published in advance of the 1916 centenary and expected general election in 2016.

The Wheel is a national organisation that represents and supports community, voluntary and charitable organisations in Ireland. Founded in 1999, we currently have over 1,100 members across Ireland, reflecting the enormous scope and scale of this vibrant and diverse sector. See www.wheel.ie

Is mór an pléisiúr dom a bheith anseo anocht chun dara léacht bhliantúil an Wheel a thabhairt. Is mian liom mo bhuíochas a chur in iúl do Dheirdre Garvey agus do stiúrthóirí an Wheel as ucht a gcuireadh dom bheith libh, agus libhse ar fad as ucht na fíorchaoin fáilte sin.

[It is a great pleasure to be here this evening to deliver the second annual Wheel lecture. May I thank Deirdre Garvey and the Directors of The Wheel for their invitation to join you, and all of you for that warm welcome.]

The contribution of The Wheel to Irish society has been a valuable and significant one. The Wheel is, of course, founded on the vision and great compassion of the late Mary Redmond. I know that Deirdre Garvey will speak about Mary in more detail later this evening. However, before I address the main topic of my speech, may I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Mary, who always gave so generously of her skills and professionalism in pursuit of a fairer and more equal society. I came to know Mary through her involvement with the Irish Hospice Foundation and, like all those who were privileged to have known her, remember her with great admiration and respect. Her loss to Irish society is immeasurable.

Bhí áthas orm gur ghlac an Wheel páirt i dTionscnamh Eitice Uachtarán na hÉireann. Tá mé thar a bheith buíoch daoibh as ucht na naoi mórthéamaí a d'eascair ó na tríocha 'People's Conversation' a sheoladh chugam. Seard a theastaigh ó na saoránaigh lenar labhair sibh ná:

[I was delighted that the Wheel participated and continued with the themes of the President of Ireland Ethics Initiative. I am really grateful for your sending me the nine major themes that have emerged from your thirty People’s Conversations. The citizens you consulted sought :]

As a society, we have of course recently faced a time of great challenge, a time which has called for an interrogation of the values by which we live together as we set about the work of transition from a society which was not the best version of ourselves to one which is grounded in a more ethical version of our Irishness. We must not assume, of course, that widespread support for an ethical society now exists. There is no clear evidence that equality is a major popular demand, or that there is a groundswell of support for a version of the State that might introduce it.

Fundamental to the process of interrogation of values are questions of governance and the related questions which we may ask in this decade of commemoration as to whether, in our political independence, we have lived up to the ideals articulated during the formation of the Irish Republic.

At the very heart of republicanism lies the principle of participative citizenship, and the right of all citizens to be represented and to have their voice heard. It is a concept based on an understanding of the State as a shared responsibility, rather than an abstract entity. A true republic must be built on principles and policies which recognise the common welfare, and which place the ideas of community and public at the centre, rejecting the limitations of a narrow individualistic concept of citizenship. We cannot use the appropriate ethical commemorations as a substitute for topics that must engage us now. To do that would be an exercise in bad faith and evasion.

There can be no doubt that a major cause of our recent economic crisis was a failure to question, to scrutinise and to challenge the highly individualised projects of accumulation, and self-centred ideals of consumption, which over time had come to displace models of public welfare shared in the public space and enjoyed in the public world; and the unrestrained competition which saw the extension of the space of the market to the centre of public policy on matters far beyond economic goods and appropriate areas of competitive choice.

As members of a society which has been affected more than most by the global financial crisis, Irish people have been led to an abrupt realisation that the challenge of living together in a way that permits a flourishing of human capability and a cohesive society cannot be met, indeed can be contradicted, by an uncritical confusion of what constitutes the essential needs of citizens with what might be described as consumer wants of an insatiable kind, and the reliance on the market for the satisfaction of both.

The challenge is to recover a capacity to debate and seek a version of the State that meets our demands as a Republic and a deepening of democracy. We must not despair even if at present that capacity at so many institutional levels is not so much in evidence.

The need for a discourse that would encompass and examine all the connections between economy, society and the State was obvious and urgent, and this was what motivated me in November 2013 to launch the President of Ireland’s Ethics Initiative, which was designed to stimulate discussion across all sectors of Irish society on the challenges of living together ethically.

It commenced with an invitation to Irish third level institutions to embrace the challenge of discussing the principles and values by which we might wish to live together as a society, in the wake of a crisis that starkly requires us to interrogate our vision of social bonds and human relations, and our conceptions of “prosperity” and “the good life”.

The Ethics Initiative continued with my proposal that it be brought to civil society organisations as an overall frame, as a debate, above all as an opportunity for critical and fresh thinking, contributing to harnessing and supporting the profusion of positive initiatives that exist in Irish society.

Across Ireland, there are now many conversations underway; conversations that question our values and our assumptions, and explore the means by which we might transform our society and the world around us. Some of these conversations have focussed on specific dimensions of human life such as work, gender and the relations between different parts of our planet.

The conversation which was launched by The Wheel almost a year ago, ‘the People’s Conversation’, has focussed on many dimensions of the concept of citizenship. In reading the reports of the progress to date, I see that ‘the People’s Conversation’ has developed into a dynamic dialogue, engaging the imagination and the energy of citizens from across Ireland; people who have come together to envision a new version of citizenship, and to explore a new set of principles by which we might live ethically as a society.

It is a discourse that has seized the opportunity to recognise the importance of each individual member of our community, and of our own duty and responsibility to seek to play a role in the creation of a fair and equitable society, one in which all citizens have the opportunity to flourish. I believe that this conception of the participative citizen, who is active in a community of citizens and who is empowered to participate and flourish, is a powerful idea that can be especially resonant at this moment in our history.

Over the coming year, we will all reflect on the idealism of the words and vision, and the legacy and meaning, of 1916 and of the Proclamation. There will be much discussion about the political and social significance of the events of that revolution, but we must, I suggest, take the opportunity to consider in a new way the ideals which inspired those men and women, test them, retrieve them and add to them. Central to their thinking was the idea of a republican citizenship which would be inclusive and grounded in equality. The theme of equality was not automatically to survive within the theme of nationalism as portrayed or indeed in the institutional arrangements of independence which followed the foundation of an independent State.

The themes which are materialising from ‘the Peoples’ Conversation’ demonstrate that the aspirations of 1916 continue to ask difficult questions of the Ireland of today. The reports from the various events hosted under ‘the People’s Conversation’ speak of widespread disquiet at a political system perceived as disconnected from the everyday concerns and needs of its citizens; of a desire for a better quality of engagement and participation by all citizens, including the respecting of a citizenship floor of basic rights; and of an urgent need to restore the language of citizenship, ensuring all members of society are respected as active participants in that society, and do not become relegated to the role of passive ‘clients’ or ‘customers’ or ‘consumers,’ their main purpose being to serve a de-peopled economy.

Some fundamental questions that must be addressed when considering the challenge of citizenship are: how we define the community of citizens, and how do we achieve participation by citizens. How do we achieve a State that is inclusive, innovative, and creative while all responsive to the needs and best ethical aspirations of citizens willing to think and work beyond institutional accord/dissent for the benefit of the community and future generations.

I believe that as we engage with the important task of ethically remembering 1916, we must acknowledge and address the limitations of a conception of republic or of citizenship based on any form of exclusive nationalism. Just as the founding fathers of the Irish Republic faced the challenge of inclusivity of difference, in our time we too face the question as to how a society which calls itself a democratic republic will view and accommodate alternative communities and identities. For instance, present-day Ireland prides itself on having become more cosmopolitan and more multicultural in recent years. We must ask ourselves, however, if we have fully engaged with the challenges and complexities of becoming an increasingly diverse society.

There can be no doubt that in the Ireland of the future, for example, we will be judged with reference to how our policies and practices responded to the plight of those who sought refuge here. We will be judged on how we treat and make judgements on those who present themselves at our borders as strangers in difficulty, on how we respond to their stories as they seek our protection, and on the respect we afford them in the legal and administrative processes we oversee. Did we do so with empathy and compassion, as well as ensuring these people justice, as is our obligation? While there are international obligations laid down in law regarding the protection of refugees, different national cultures reveal their strengths and weaknesses in how these are interpreted and executed in practice. Beyond the minimum standards of international law, ethical societies cannot remain passive or unmoved when confronted with urgent human need and the plight of those fleeing conflict and oppression, as all of us in Europe are at the present moment.

We do not need to be told that the exclusion from full participation in society and political community – however temporary it may be – is a profoundly debilitating experience, and a rejection of the fundamental principles of democracy and republicanism.

German philosopher Hannah Arendt in a text entitled “We Refugees” powerfully described the fate of refugees as that of human beings who, unprotected by any specific political convention, suffer from the plight of being nothing but human beings. What Arendt pinpoints in this text is the deadlock arising from the entanglement between the rights of man and those of the citizen: in the nation-State system, the so-called ‘inalienable’ rights of man cease to be protected as soon as they are decoupled from the rights of the citizens of a State, leading to this tragic paradox that the figure who should have embodied the rights of man par excellence – the refugee – constitutes instead the radical crisis of this concept.

In this context, the moral question of how we treat “the other”, “the stranger”, as arrival or minority within our community, must be a central concern, not only for government, but for all sections of society – and for all citizens. The arrival on these shores of people who are fleeing war and persecution, the movement of workers and families who are escaping destitution and poverty are global issues, in the addressing of which Ireland has a moral duty to play its part, through our role in the international community, and in our laws, policies and practices at the national level. Of course this issue is one that is inextricably linked to the process of commemoration itself, given the particular Irish historical experience of migration and exile.

The conversation has also recognised the critical issue of educating our people to be active and informed participative citizens if we, as a society, are to achieve a truly ethical and active citizenship. If we are to become a true Republic, based on the sovereignty of the people, it is vital that we ensure that all members of our society are equipped with the skills to question and challenge decisions made by individuals and institutions in positions of power and authority, ensuring such decisions are ethical, based on fairness and not on any privilege derived from wealth.

I have said before, in many speeches over the last three years, that the society we so dearly wish for will not take shape unless we acknowledge the need for an education of character and desires, the need to encourage and support critical reflection and a more holistic approach to knowledge. Specifically, there would surely be considerable merit in introducing the teaching of philosophy in our schools, which could facilitate the fostering of an ethical consciousness in our fellow citizens; a consciousness that will enable citizens to think more critically and to challenge the inevitability of that which is too often presented as given and unchangeable. Such ability is even more important nowadays, when the masses of citizens are deemed by some to be too economically illiterate to understand, or have a say on, complex fiscal matters. Then, too, when an occasional speech of mine is described as ‘from the high moral ground’ I realise that is really a rejection of engagement in new thinking – a lazy but real defence of a status quo that has delivered exclusion, and misery too.

We are now moving slowly towards an economic recovery, albeit one that is measured by a set of indicators whose usefulness is now being questioned in so many countries of the world. We remain challenged by the social questions – how to build a society that is free from fear and that offers all citizens an opportunity to flourish, a recovery which will bring with it new challenges. It is critical that such a recovery does not become a resuscitation of that which collapsed with such disastrous consequences for citizens, a simple return to ‘business as usual’, as many would like us to do. The crisis we have recently experienced was not solely an economic one, but also a social and cultural one which left us in no doubt that Ireland was in need of transformation. It is a transformation that must extend democracy and initiate changes in our political structures, our institutions, our language, our way of dealing with each other, and in our consciousness.

The version of Ireland which prevailed in our recent past must now be regarded as over, and rejected as sufficient for the achieving of a real Republic, and we must remain alert to the dangers of returning to that inadequate and unworthy version of ourselves. What is crucial now is that we construct and support the intellectual space and the public space to produce the new ideas, new policies and new solutions required for a very different Republic of the future.

Initiatives such as ‘the People’s Conversation’ play an increasingly vital role as we continue our advocacy towards achieving an inclusive economy, providing an opportunity for diverse groups to come together and explore and examine our social contracts and political paradigms. I sincerely believe that these conversations will not only deepen and broaden the discussion on what kind of country we want to live in, but will also generate a new vision for the Ireland of the future, a future built on an inclusive citizenship, a creative society, and a real Republic.