People do not get "fired up by tweaking the tax system," the Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Dr Donal Murray, has said. What got them fired up was "belief in the kind of society they want". Such belief was where people's convictions and drive came from, he said.
Dr Murray said if there was apathy in the lead-up to the election, it lay "in the assumption that politics should be conducted without reference to the source of people's hope, inspiration and commitment".
He was speaking at a conference on Religion and the European Project: the Irish Experience, in Dublin yesterday.
"One of the great concerns in many democratic countries, including Ireland, is the growth of apathy among voters. If one were to set out to create apathy, I suspect that one very effective way of doing so would be to persuade people that politics has nothing at all to do with their beliefs and convictions as to what life is about."
Dr Murray said that this would be a recipe for producing the idea that politics dealt with issues not at the heart of the matter. "It would produce the feeling that political debates lack depth and have a certain emptiness about them."
He continued: "In the run up to an election I would not dare to ask whether any of these feelings may exist in our country. If they do, I believe the fault is to be found in the acquiescence of our whole society in the assumption that politics should be conducted without reference to the real source of people's hope and inspiration and commitment."
Dermot McCarthy, secretary to the Government, said the structured dialogue involving the State and faith/ethical communities "might come to be seen as an innovative stratagem on a par with social partnership". Social partnership was more informal here than elsewhere, as it had no legal basis and was less structured.