PRESIDENT'S VISIT TO RUSSIA:PRESIDENT MARY McAleese has criticised lawyers, economists and regulators for their role in the economic crisis and said professionals must be "hard-wired to behave ethically".
Speaking to students at St Petersburg State University of Economics and Finance, she said the economic flux had raised questions about how legal regulation could be made stronger to avoid future financial crises.
"It was long argued . . . that heavy regulation, strong-handed regulation was not the most conducive environment for business and yet we know to our cost that light regulation was a recipe for trouble," she said.
If we were to avoid the extremes of economic boom and bust we needed smart and rigorous regulatory systems that also allowed commerce to flourish.
"We need professional people who are hard-wired to behave ethically, to think ethically, to act ethically, to respect the requirements of compliance, to understand they are in the public interest, to see themselves as operating in the broad public interest," she said.
Mrs McAleese said legal academics, economists and practitioners needed to work closely together to better understand the technical complexities of financial systems and make their operations more accessible to the average citizen. Then we could render "their sometimes impenetrable transactions . . . more amenable to effective regulation".
She said the education and training process in these professions also needed to be re-examined. "I have long been of the view that the teaching of law and of our legal rights and responsibilities as citizens should never be kept . . . simply for the consumption of college students of law, but rather should be given in childhood, should be given in our schools, should be given in our homes and should be available to all so that law doesn't come as a surprise to us much later in life".
The President's comments on the economic crisis follow remarks she made in New York in May when she said the cuts in public spending had had real and very painful effects on families, and people were "mad as hell".
She was speaking on the penultimate day of her five-day State visit to Russia. Earlier yesterday, Mrs McAleese held a meeting with the governor of St Petersburg, Valentina Matvienko, at Sheremetevsky Palace. She is regularly described as one of the most powerful women in Russia and has close political ties to Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin. Ms Matvienko said she hoped Irish companies people would come to do business in St Petersburg, which was a dynamic and developing city.
Ireland's links with St Petersburg were highlighted by Mrs McAleese when she attended a performance of Irish music and dance in the State Hermitage Museum last night.
She pointed out that an Irish soldier, Peter Lacy, became a field marshal in St Petersburg in the 1700s and served five sovereigns. He was made a Knight of the Order of Alexander Nevsky and he danced with the future Catherine II at her wedding feast.
Mrs McAleese said Lacy was a bad dancer and kept treading on his partner's toes. Lacy must have been from Belfast "for I married a fellow like that", she said.
There was no danger that toes would be trodden on when Riverdance leads Ciara McGillan and Brendan Dorris performed for the President. Pianist Mícheál O'Rourke and tenor Dean Power joined musicians Dónal Lunny, Paddy Glackin, Liam O'Flynn and world champion bodhrán player Aimée Farrell Courtney to entertain the 200 guests in the Catherine the Great Theatre.