GOVERNMENTS WHICH attempt to spend their way out of the economic crisis were sharply criticised yesterday by the Church of Ireland primate, Archbishop Alan Harper, who said such fiscal stimulus policies “must be abandoned”.
Addressing the Church of Ireland general synod, which opened in Armagh, he also spoke of the waste of donors’ money by non-governmental organisations and said there was “compelling evidence that international aid does not work well”.
He said what worried him about “quantitative easing” – in effect printing more money – and fiscal stimulus was “the extent to which these things are deliberately designed to generate more borrowing and more conspicuous consumption.
“That outlook, at least in part, led to the culture that pervaded the very model that crashed so spectacularly last year.”
Archbishop Harper said “that model depended upon an acceptance of the mantra of Gordon Gekko that ‘greed is good’, together with the doctrines that conspicuous consumption is essential and that secular individualism must be exalted above considerations of the commonwealth.
“Such guiding principles, for that is what they became, must be abandoned in constructing the world economy of the future. Those principles were creative of a society that tacitly approved selfishness and excluded those who were financially uncompetitive.”
Saying that “cuts in international aid budgets are deeply to be deplored”, he went on to speak of the “compelling evidence that international aid does not work well”.
“It tends to institutionalise dependency, keeping people alive but in continuing poverty, whilst, often disproportionately, benefiting donor governments and highly paid consultants. It has also gained an unenviable reputation for feeding corruption.”
He criticised waste on overheads by NGOs. “It concerns me that the generosity of people does not always seem to be matched by the cost effectiveness of some of the NGOs,” he said.
Aid agencies’ overheads, he said, should not cost more than 10 per cent of money donated “if they are to keep faith with [donors].”
Concern for the future of Protestant education in the Republic was expressed by a number of speakers at the synod yesterday. Archbishop
Harper said his belief was that “a significant majority of parents in both jurisdictions in Ireland favour the education of their children within a school shaped by the Christian religious ethos of their choice.”
He felt, however, that there should be “a policy imperative for all schools to create purposeful partnerships across all the perceived divides”.
He contended that “a deliberate policy of inclusivity through partnership could redress any perceived divisive effects of separated education.”
Such a policy would also go “a long way to addressing the other serious educational division in Northern Ireland, that between selective and nonselective schools in the secondary sector”, he said.