Future generations would judge us on how the unprecedented wealth of the country was used to help those left behind by our buoyant economy, Minister for Social Affairs Séamus Brennan said yesterday.
Mr Brennan, speaking in Glenties, Co Donegal, said it was time to consider how the generations that followed would look back and judge us.
"They will look on us as the people who had a grasp of the Holy Grail of economic success, wealth, full employment and endless opportunity. Most of all they will judge us on how we used that prized possession," he said.
He doubted they would be too impressed by how many millionaires, or even billionaires, were created.
"Instead, and rightly so, they will judge us on how we harnessed that unprecedented splurge of wealth to reach down and lift up those who had been left behind by our buoyant economy," he said.
They would look at how we reached down and lifted children out of distress, how lone parents were lifted out of social stigma and given hope for the future. And how we recognised and rewarded our older people. "How well we respond to these challenges will be our legacy," Mr Brennan said.
One of the greatest challenges between now and 2016, the centenary of the 1916 Rising, must be to finally eradicate poverty and social exclusion, especially in the case of our children, he said.
However, Fr Peter McVerry said that when he looked at the past and thought of the future, he was full of dismay.
He made two assumptions as he looked to 2030: that for the foreseeable future significant economic growth would continue; and the Republic would continue to have a centre-right government. The Celtic Tiger had promoted an individualism which was already a seed growing in the Western capitalist economy. People were valued by their contribution to the economy, and there was gross inequality in society and increasing crime.
There was an alternative which depended on two policy options. First, that socially integrated housing was developed, and second, that the structures of the educational system to ensure equality of access and opportunity were radically reformed.