President Higgins and ‘neo-liberalism’

Sir, – It is to be hoped that President Higgins, as an academic and intellectual, would welcome robust discussion on his position on ethics for all, and it is a pity that many of the responses to Dan O’Brien’s reflection on his DCU speech (Business Opinion, September 20th) were so defensive.

As a researcher and occasional lecturer in clinical ethics, I welcome President Higgins’s investment of energy and authority into the topic of ethics for all. However, a number of aspects of his address troubled myself and others who were at the lecture.

In the first instance, it was pity that the ethics for “all” seemed to get funnelled towards companies, auditors, economists and politicians, rather than equally relating to individual citizens – illegal turf-cutters, strategic buy-to-let mortgage defaulters, those working in, or availing of, the black economy – for whom there is equally a challenge in developing a sense of a society with a more embedded ethical perspective.

Secondly, we were offered a very bleak view of economists, and economics as a rigorous academic discipline and a broad church, declared a craft rather than a science. Joseph Stiglitz, Tyler Cowan and Paul Krugman counter this, as do the economists engaged in TASC in Ireland. It is notable that Jürgen Habermas in a talk in UCD in 2010 indicated that economists such as Stiglitz were key elements of intellectual discourse on how we shape society.

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In any event, while it is very good to get ethics more centre stage and promoted as a fundamental of civil society, let us ensure a lively and open debate which liberates the subject as far as possible from ideology.

DESMOND O’NEILL,

Professor in Medical

Gerontology,

Trinity College,

Dublin 2.

Sir, – It is illuminating to discover that President De Gaulle used to pay the electricity bill for the Élysée Palace for the time after 6pm when the workers had gone home and Eoin Dillon (September 26th) suggests President Higgins should follow this precedent. As well as being honourable and brave, De Gaulle was devoted to rectitude. Even as president, De Gaulle and his strict wife, Yvonne, paid for their own telephone calls. Dinner parties with the De Gaulles were resolutely gloomy, frigid and dreary. Neither believed in small talk and Yvonne de Gaulle got a migraine at the mere thought of meeting a divorced woman. Do we want all this in the Áras? Merci, mais non. – Yours, etc,

PATRICK O’BYRNE,

Shandon Crescent,

Phibsborough, Dublin 7.

Sir, – Desmond FitzGerald (September 25th) is right: “Let’s see Mr Higgins and his ilk lead by example and make some sacrifices to lessen the burden they place on the taxpayers of a small bankrupt country.” Furthermore, if President Higgins really wishes to participate in public discussion of the ethics of the current macroeconomic management of our affairs let him answer Dan O’Brien’s convincing critique (Business, September 20th) via a letter or article within the same length limits of that article. – Yours, etc,

JOE FOYLE,

Sandford Road,

Ranelagh, Dublin 6.

Sir, – I read Dan O’Brien’s critical comments (Business Opinion, September 20th) on President Higgins’s DCU speech, entitled “Towards an Ethical Economy”. The President’s speech was a tour de force on truth, values and choices. That is the moral and philosophical leadership that we expect from a President, especially from one who is a distinguished intellectual with a well worked-out view of the world.

The values of friendship, love and caring that the President espoused in his speech, clearly invites us as citizens to look beyond acquisitive individualism, as the basis of the good society. This thinking is, of course, challenging for those who do not share the President’s critical humanistic vision. Evidently, they think our first citizen should be silenced. There are shades of the trial of Socrates in these demands for intellectual orthodoxy.

I will be recommending the President’s inspiring speech to my students as a powerful discourse on the contested meaning of truth in the contemporary world. – Yours, etc,

Prof FRED POWELL,

Dean of Social Science,

University College Cork.

Sir, – While Desmond FitzGerald’s personal attack on President Higgins (September 25th) is itself undeserving of comment, it does show that the President’s remarks have hit home. – Yours, etc,

HARRY McCAULEY,

Maynooth Park,

Maynooth, Co Kildare.