On January 1st, 1990, the newly-elected Czech President, Vaclav Havel, stated in a New Year's Day speech: "We live in a contaminated moral environment.
"We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves.
"Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimensions, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships."
We in the Irish Republic will do well to dwell on Havel's words in our own "contaminated moral environment".
Havel made the point that the peaceful Czech revolution of 1989 revealed "the enormous human, moral and spiritual potential and civic culture" that had slumbered in Czech society "under the enforced mask of apathy".
A similar potential "slumbers" in this State, in the vast array of community and voluntary organisations.
I wrote Citizenship And Public Service in the belief it was required that a public philosophy for voluntary organisations be clearly and freshly articulated, based on active citizenship and civic republicanism.
The voluntary sector, through its governance and management structures, has the capacity to develop active and voluntary citizenship in our pluralist society.
This will require a shared public philosophy based upon civic republicanism. Such a philosophy will transform not only the self-understanding of the leaders of voluntary organisations but also the approach of statutory agencies to voluntary bodies.
Havel sought a politics based upon morality. Let us not despair of such politics for our Irish Republic. As Havel said in that New Year's Day speech: "Let us try in a new time and in a new way to restore this concept of politics. Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community.
"Let us teach ourselves and others that politics can be not only the art of the possible, especially if this means the art of speculation, calculation, intrigue, secret deals and pragmatic manoeuvring, but that it can even be the art of the impossible, namely the art of improving ourselves and the world . . ."
We must reclaim the term "republicanism" in Irish political discourse from the violent separatists who have for so long besmirched it. There is a distinctive republican conception of society based on active citizenship.
In a Republic citizen participation is indispensable. Community and voluntary organisations provide the effective possibility of this widespread citizen involvement, participation and development. Such organisations connect the private and public aspects of life to form "civil society".
Such civil society in this State will require a major paradigm shift in the governance and management of our public services.
This will be away from "managerialism" towards "voluntarism" . From a "controlling state" to "an enabling state".
Sadly, "managerialism" has come to predominate in Irish public administration. It is manifest in the attempt to apply "managerial" techniques and "market" concepts to the delivery of public services. Such "managerialism" sees people as "users" of services, as "customers".
In the voluntarist approach - based on civic republicanism - citizens exercise their rights, duties, and obligations not only to participate in but also to govern and manage public services in every key domain of life, health, education, welfare and community services of all kinds.
The required new regenerative forces will be located in members of the boards and management committees of the many thousands of community and voluntary organisations in Irish society.
How these "trustees" are allowed to govern and manage is crucial to whether they can fulfil their real vocation in democratic society. They are a vital resource for renewing our moral commitments, for developing trust and the civic virtues which a renewal of our democracy will require.
As Robert Greenleaf wrote in his seminal essay Trustees As Servants: "Trustees can become the persons who are trusted partly because they are seen as being unusually sensitive to the corrupting influences of power and who are an effective bulwark against the abuses of power that are so common today. They would be the people, among all others, who would insist that power be used to serve and not to hurt."
A powerful recent Irish example is the role the Irish Haemophilia Society has played in seeking to call to account those responsible for the tragic events affecting its members.
Citizenship And Public Service: Voluntary And Statutory Relation- ships In Irish Healthcare argues that community and voluntary organisations create and develop "civil society" in which the positive virtues of citizenship (participation and caring for others) are promoted.
It suggests such organisations require a different model of governance and management from those used in public administration or in the commercial sector.
William Beveridge, the founding father of the modern welfare state, declared that "the vigour and abundance of Voluntary Action outside one's home, individually and in association with other citizens, for bettering one's own life and that of one's fellows are the distinguishing marks of a free society".
Dr Fergus O'Ferrall is director of the Adelaide Hospital Society. He is author of Citizenship And Public Service: Voluntary And Statutory Relationships In Irish Healthcare (£15)
