Dr Martin Mansergh
Dr Martin Mansergh has insisted that the Fine Gael and Labour coalition “alienated” religious voters during their time in Government.
Writing in The Irish Catholic this week, Dr Mansergh said that politicians and speech writers “whose anti-clerical invective may have won applause in the national media” now “need to reflect on where public attitudes really lie” with regard to religion.
The former minister suggested that the reason “the Government and especially the Labour Party lost in the recent election was that they alienated many of those for whom religion matters in their lives”.
Attitudes
“Speech writers, and those who use them, whose anti-clerical invective may have won applause in the national media, need to reflect on where public attitudes really lie,” he said.
Noting that 20 years ago, “most Irish people would have taken the religious liberty guaranteed in the Proclamation for granted”, Dr Mansergh said, “If in the early decades of the State, Church influence was too strong, and, because of the secrecy which enveloped it, unaccountable, and in certain instances open to abuse, that has been more than corrected since.”