Ireland falls short of being a true republic, former Progressive Democrats leader Mr Des O'Malley told the Bantry Bay Summer School dinner in Co Cork last night.
He said a proportion of the population "still thinks that the State has a right and duty to enact into public law the private tenets of the majority church."
Mr O'Malley said the Irish EU Presidency presented opportunities to resolve differences on a larger scale. There was a lack of debate about the meaning of a more federal union. "We tend to debate Europe in purely financial terms. We add up the receipts and disbursements", he said, "and leave the philosophising to those who speak French or German.
Irish people abroad were able to live in perfect harmony with each other and everyone else, he said. "It is only on this island that the Irish tend to aspire to dangerous forms of triumphalism, intolerance and domination."
He said the term "republican now meant the opposite of what it should. "It means hatred instead of fraternity."