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Posted 20 October 2010

President of Ireland: Universities key to re-imagining Irish Society

Delivering the 2010 Newman Lecture at University College Dublin, the President of Ireland Mary McAleese called for a more holistic approach to re-imagining Irish society.

Recent experience, she said, “has taught us that, along with encouraging confidence, entrepreneurialism and leadership, we also need to encourage prudence and risk awareness so that the common good is never compromised again by a blindness to consequences.”

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“Are we capable of constructing a universal bulwark against the threat of recidivist foolhardiness?” she asked.

“Will it be enough to construct such safeguards by official oversight and regulation of institutions and institutional practices without also addressing, at a much more intimate level, the everyday human bulwark constructed by the kind of common sensibility that comes from what Newman calls the "philosophical habit of mind" – a habit of mind that actively looks out for ways of thinking and doing that promote a holistic and integrated view of the individual, society and humanity.”

Pictured at Newman House, St Stephens Green (l-r): Mr Dermot Gallagher, Chairman, 小鸟体育 Governing Authority; Prof Brigid Laffan, Principal UCD College of Human Sciences; Dr Hugh Brady, President of 小鸟体育; President Mary McAleese; Prof Mary Daly, Principal UCD College of Arts & Celtic Studies; and Dr Pádraic Conway, Director of the 小鸟体育 International Centre for Newman Studies
Pictured at Newman House, St Stephens Green (l-r): Mr Dermot Gallagher, Chairman, 小鸟体育 Governing Authority; Prof Brigid Laffan, Principal UCD College of Human Sciences; Dr Hugh Brady, President of 小鸟体育; President of Ireland, Mary McAleese; Prof Mary Daly, Principal UCD College of Arts & Celtic Studies; and Dr Pádraic Conway, Director of the 小鸟体育 International Centre for Newman Studies

“Somehow it seems to me that before we can re-imagine our universities we have to re-imagine our society and our world for all of our universities are placed four square in the public space,” she added.