Our very success made the continuing blight of exclusion and poverty even more intolerable than in previous generations, the President, Mrs McAleese, said yesterday.
There was no longer a question of whether we had the means to tackle such problems once and for all, she said. "It now comes down to whether we, as a people, have the will, the imagination and the determination to address these issues and the new social challenges which have emerged: the tragic deaths of young men through suicide; the despair of drug addiction; growing levels of hostility towards asylum-seekers - the list goes on."
Addressing the Literary and Historical Society in UCD, Mrs McAleese said: "The unconvinced wonder why they should be bothered, why the lives of the poor or under-achieving should be their concern, what is to be gained from trying to change things."
She said we were still nowhere near our full potential as a people. Our business life, our workforce, our culture, our community sector - every facet of Irish life - could benefit from creating a society that was all centre and no margins, a society where each child was given as his or her birthright effective opportunities to blossom fully.
That society would not be created by chance, by leaving it to others to do, or worse, by dismissing those who worked in the service of others as misguided idealists, out of touch with reality.
"Those who recognise that the natural symbiosis of life in this society has not yet been achieved, that it is still scarred by elitism and considerably short of its full potential are the true realists. They recognise that the faults and failings of Ireland in the 21st century are not inevitable, that they are amenable to change, that there can be no greater challenge or fulfilment than knowing that their commitment, their actions and their sense of hope have made a difference to the lives of others."