Recovery must drive social equity

The old gods are resurgent

One of the darkly wry, self-deprecating phrases used in the days following our 2008 economic collapse was “that this is too good a crisis to waste”— meaning that the hard lessons we had to learn should be used to drive reform so we might never again implode so disastrously.

Sadly, if not entirely unpredictably, President Michael D Higgins warned this week that we seem on the verge of “business as usual” and that all of the old gods of “greed, self-interest, the insatiable pursuit of material gratifications, unrestrained competition, and the placing of the market as the centre of public policy for all human needs”, are being ushered back to their seats around the high altar of Irish life.