President Michael D Higgins has condemned the “obsession” with achieving economic growth in a speech on Friday that was implicitly critical of the economic policies pursued by successive governments.
The President’s views on one of the constants of Irish Government policy – the promotion of economic growth – may raise eyebrows in Government.
“That narrow focus constitutes an empty economics which has lost touch with everything meaningful, a social science which no longer is connected, or even attempts to be connected, with the social issues and objectives for which it was developed over centuries. It is incapable of offering solutions to glaring inadequacies of provision as to public needs, devoid of vision.”
“A deadly cocktail of exploding inequalities, massive deregulation and a globalisation defined solely by trade densities has precipitated this ecological crisis.” Senior Government figures declined to make any substantive comment on the President’s views, even off the record. For a long time the general rule in successive governments has been not to tangle with the President, as he is more popular than any politician.He said he had “called for many years now on third-level institutions” to expand their teaching of economics to include the “emancipatory potential for a new, recovered political economy”.
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