As Ireland faces into a new millennium it has the potential to ensure full citizenship for all its citizens. It also has the capacity to develop a new social contract. The medium-term review published by the ESRI presents a scenario full of potential. That potential, however, could be easily lost if the vision guiding policy development in the years ahead fails to recognise the crucial importance of including all Irish people within its ambit.
For two decades and more, poor people have been told they must wait until the fundamentals were put in place and got right.
It is clear now that Ireland is moving rapidly towards a situation where income per head will reach EU average levels (by 2005) and the national debt can be eliminated (by 2010). As well as this, unemployment will not rise above 5 per cent, real wage rates can rise more rapidly and there will be a dramatic fall in the dependency ratio (in the period to 2005).
This is good news to a society accustomed to struggle. Will it be good news for every Irish person or will the benefits go to those who have already benefited? The choices rest in the hands of our policy makers.
There is another Ireland that needs attention, an Ireland that has not done so well from the growth of the Celtic Tiger. There are substantial numbers of people living in poverty. The number of people long-term unemployed is still problematic. Access to appropriate accommodation is becoming more difficult for large numbers of people. Adult illiteracy levels remain a scandal. The dropout rates from second-level education are storing up problems for the future. Rural exclusion continues to be a major forgotten issue in Irish society. Some communities who were excluded from the benefits of recent developments are falling further behind.
There are major issues to be addressed in the areas of equality, healthcare and disability. Environmental issues are not being addressed adequately. Social exclusion is still the lived experience of large numbers of people. I could go on and on. The point is clear: we need a clear vision of a future that addresses these, similar and related issues, if future prosperity is to be good news for every citizen.
"Full citizenship for all" provides a fulcrum around which a comprehensive and inclusive vision of the future could be built. Citizenship is about more than having a passport and the right to vote. It is also about having social, economic and cultural rights which have been badly neglected at a national level as we sought to build up the economy.
These same rights have been neglected at an EU level as primacy was given to a series of major economic projects focused on building a union which would eliminate the prospect of war emerging in Western Europe again. At the EU level failure to promote some of these rights is now beginning to be addressed. At a national level Ireland now has the potential to underpin the development of these rights.
These rights should include:
The right to sufficient income to live life with basic dignity
The right to work
The right to appropriate accommodation
The right to basic healthcare
The right to relevant education
The right to participate in the cultural life and heritage of their community and wider society. This includes the right of minorities to have their cultures respected.
The right to participate in shaping the decisions that affect their lives.
Any new national agreement and Government policy generally, should include detailed programmes to underpin these social, economic and cultural rights.
Making sure that positive developments are sustainable, socially, economically and environmentally friendly now emerges as another major issue. The labour force will not be increasing at previous rates. The environment cannot be used and polluted as in the past and still be expected to renew itself.
Sustainable development has been defined as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Conventional economic models of development or progress are failing to meet the needs of millions and millions of people on this planet today. There is a growing demand worldwide to find new models which will conserve the planet and its resources and enable people to meet their own needs and the needs of others.
Consequently, a programme for sustainable development should also form part of any new national programme and of government policy generally.
This could move towards a tax system based on the realisation that it is desirable that people and organisations not be taxed on what they earn by their own useful work and enterprise, nor on the value they add nor on what they contribute to the common good. Rather the tax which people and organisations should be required to pay would be based on the value they subtract by their use of common resources.
Such a programme would also recognise that all citizens are entitled to share equally in the annual revenue so raised. They would share in this partly by way of services provided at public expense and partly by way of a basic income.
Here we have the basis of a new social contract for a new era. This could, for example, result in:
The introduction of a basic income system
The abolishing of taxes on incomes, profits and the value that is added by the production of useful goods and services
Replacing those taxes with a land-rent tax, an energy tax and a tax on currency transactions such as the Tobin tax.
It is clear from the ESRI's Medium-Term Review that the resources exist for such developments. We need to seek out and articulate a vision of the future in which everyone has full citizenship.
To support the development of such a vision we should devise programmes to underpin social, economic and cultural rights and seek out a new social contract for a new era. The resources to provide for such developments exist. Whether there is a political will to take the bold steps required to build such a future remains to be seen. It's a question of choices. For once, the choices are in our own hands.
Dr Sean Healy, SMA, is director of the justice office in the Conference of Religious in Ireland.
