It was a fact that “many people who are Irish and have come from outside Ireland have brought with them as heritage and as gift the combination of culture and faith that is their identity,” he said in his Easter sermon at Dublin’sCivic engagement which takes account of religious and non-religious stakeholders in Irish society was essential to the public interest and to building a trusted democracy, he said.
He said it “could lead us right into two things that currently are at loggerheads in Ireland and neither of them is going away anywhere soon: secular policy and religious belonging”. “The public interest needs to give voice to real things beyond budgetary provision and number crunching and discontent. It needs to address ‘public wellbeing’ and ‘private happiness’ and the provision of both,” he said.