President McAleese has joined the debate over sleaze in political life and called for the establishment of higher values to counter the corruption now besetting Irish society.
In one of the most outspoken speeches of her presidency, Mrs McAleese said in St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin that the "sordid side of the country's secret life is now under the spotlight and we are deeply challenged by the evidence of many different forms of corruption".
While not specifically mentioning payments to politicians as the major source of her concern, disclosure of a long catalogue of irregular and corrupt financial relationships at the Moriarty and Flood tribunals forms the backdrop to her strictures, along with internal inquiries by both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.
Different forms of corruption reflected a failure of leadership and of standards within the churches and the political and civic community. "We have contaminated the wells of hope that we draw from, poisoning the atmosphere with cynicism and doubt."
Exploring the theme "Hopes for the New Millennium", the President said that cynicism drained energy and leached acid into hope. Voices were needed to insist on humanity's ability to be noble, to be decent, to live authentic lives that could withstand the searching scrutiny of the spotlight.
One of her hopes, she said, was that this would be "a chastening period, of purging and purification radically calling us to higher values instead of providing self-justification for low standards whether in business, the church, politics, the street or the home."
Speaking of Northern Ireland, the President hoped the divisions of the past would give way to new friendships and partnerships between North and South, between unionist and nationalist, Catholic and Protestant, between Ireland and England, Scotland and Wales. Too often, we had been the prisoners of history. The past had been an arsenal, to be ransacked for weapons to confirm our sense of victimhood and to identify the enemy.
Our memories had been selective and all too often, she said, they had served not to illuminate the present, but to disfigure it.
On immigration, she said many poor people arrived on our shores seeking a new start in the same way that many of our own families set out on lonely emigrant journeys across the world.
"We are new to this issue of asylum-seekers on our own doorsteps. We are struggling to deal with the issues it provokes. Like so many unforeseen problems in life, how we cope on day one is not how we cope on day 101 . . . we grow in knowledge, in wisdom, in experience, in acceptance and, please God . . .we in Ireland will in the days ahead become a country justifiably proud of how it treats and reassures the vulnerable stranger."
Finally, President McAleese said that recent years had been difficult for the churches, and Christian hope itself had suffered serious damage. There had been a failure to champion gender equality; to make the professional ministry attractive; to deal with sectarianism, and to keep the worlds of the spirit and politics in their proper perspectives.