House prices put family life at risk - Dr Connell

The cost of houses in Dublin has escalated beyond reason and could prove the undoing of normal family life, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Desmond Connell, said yesterday. This was particularly so where young couples were concerned. When both partners had to work "people were slaving from one end of the day to the other" with very little time for anything else, he said.

He had been told that people were making millions from selling land. But, he said, "property has its responsibilities, too. It is not just for the individual. It has a social responsibility". In the context and to that extent he was "an unrepentant socialist".

Speaking at the publication of the 1997 report of the Dublin section of Accord, the Catholic marriage counselling service, Dr Connell said the social responsibility of property was not being properly recognised or controlled by the State. The current "unchecked capitalism" was onesided, and he called for "a radical re-examination of the whole economic system under which we are living."

This was something he felt should be taken up by academics and the political parties. "But we are so full of the Celtic tiger that anything else seems unthinkable." He referred to the experience in England at the end of the 1980s when property prices crashed. "Are the forces operating unchecked in the kind of capitalism we have espoused militating against the fundamental values, without which we leave ourselves exposed to a wasteland experience of life?" he asked.

Dr Connell said there was "an urgent need to adapt our taxation policy to favour support for marriage". How this could be done was a matter for the experts, but the safeguarding and support of marriage was a fundamental social imperative. If there was not that, the very foundations of society were put under threat.

He did not agree that tax discrimination in favour of marriage would be seen as discrimination against people in other arrangements. He was, he emphasised, not asking for the victimisation of any group.

The group's director of marriage counselling, Ms Penny Wilson, said that almost 4,000 people came to them for help last year. Nearly half were in their 30s and had been married for between six and 10 years. Communications problems, underlined by unemployment and "overemployment", were usually the main difficulties.

The Dublin section's director of marriage preparation services, Ms Margaret Chambers, said that a survey of couples' attitudes to marriage preparation, conducted before they did the course, indicated that just 30 per cent of them thought it a good idea. However, after they did the course, that figure rose to 88 per cent. She said there was an urgent need for a media campaign to change the way people think about preparing for marriage.

There was also a need for research into what couples regarded as helpful on the courses, she said.

Dr Connell thanked the Government for its support for the marriage counselling services, and welcomed the increase in funding promised for 1998 as well as the establishment of the Family Affairs Section. He hoped that funding would also be made available for marriage preparation, prevention being better than cure.