Mary McAleese: We are ‘sorely tested’ at present.

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese said Ireland is being “sorely tested” by the colossal failure of the culture of short-term gain and quick profiteering.

Delivering her St Patrick’s Day message, Ms McAleese said some people had been seduced by the “quick euro”.

But it was others, she said, the vast majority of people who were generous who would get Ireland out of the mess.

Ireland had been tested again and again, the president said, but the last decade’s prosperity had given way to the reappearance of “ghostly realities” such as lengthening dole queues and emigration.

“Now we are sorely tested by the colossal failure of a global and local culture of short-term gain and quick profiteering,” said President McAleese.

The vast majority of people in Ireland were sharing what was in their pockets and generously caring for the poor, sick and lonely.

“They build sports clubs community centres, organisations for the retired, homework clubs, creches, youth organisations, self-help groups, charities, hospices,” Mrs McAleese said, noting most people had not opted for “selfish short-term gain”.

“Those people did not get us into this mess — but they will get us out of it,” guests to Áras an Uachtaráin were told.

Meanwhile, the Arch-bishop of Dublin yesterday reiterated his call for an end to the “absurd” gangland violence and cycle of revenge killings plaguing the capital.

Dr Diarmuid Martin, in his St Patrick’s Day message, warned the violence would not stop with one gang thinking they had beaten another. The challenge was greater for communities trying to defeat the drugs trade, he said.

His plea came as three men and a female teenager were released from garda custody after being questioned about the gangland-linked gun murder of a Tallaght man in front of his girlfriend.

Seamus O’Byrne, 27, was leaving his home at Tymon Park North, Tallaght, when he was shot three times. His partner was also shot in the leg while their young infant was left uninjured.

O’Byrne’s killing has been linked to the ongoing bloody feud between gangs based in the Crumlin and Drimnagh areas in the south of the city, which so far has killed 13 people. Last night a fifth person, a 31-year-old male, was arrested over O’Byrne’s killing.

Archbishop Martin said yesterday a message needed to go out that communities were united against the violence, the “trade in death and exploitation of human weakness”.

“Violence begets violence. We are witnessing the incongruous situation in which one revenge-killing begets further revenge, and precisely those who think that violence is an answer end up being the most vulnerable to the next round.

“This absurd violence and disregard for human life has been going on for too long. It has to stop,” he said at Mass at Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral.