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PRESIDENT MICHAEL D Higgins has said that the “disastrous consequences of an appalling property bubble” have left many Irish people in poverty they have never before experienced.
In a wide-ranging interview with TheJournal.ie at Áras an Uachtaráin yesterday, President Higgins said that during his first year in office he has witnessed “a great anger in the country”.
He said: “There is no doubt whatever that some of the institutions and professions in which people placed their trust have let people down, and let people down for the shallowest of reasons.
“There is a great anger in the country about what is perceived to be the impunity of a small number of people who have brought disaster on generations.”
The President identified youth unemployment as the biggest problem across the European Union as he spoke prior to his first presidential seminar being held at the Áras today.
Listen: In part 1, the President discusses the Being Young and Irish initiative, youth unemployment, and the issues facing Ireland’s youth…
The theme of Being Young and Irish is to be discussed by 100 young people in the presence of government officials and the Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald at a seminar in the Áras this afternoon.
Higgins hopes that the event will allow young people to articulate their vision for Ireland and how that vision might be achieved.
The project has been running for the last six months with over 700 submissions to it and four workshops, attended by the President, being held across the country.
He said: “I think that it was such an unusual exercise that we were really gaining an enormous amount from the conversations we had with young people.”
Contributions ranged from three young people in prison – who the President later went to meet – to some of the Irish diaspora who had been forced to emigrate due to the current economic climate.
“There were common themes and seven hundred people is a fair old consultation. I would have liked if it is was more but it was very, very informative,” he said.
Higgins said that among the themes to emerge were equality, specifically gender equality, equality of opportunities and equality of participation.
He said: “Young people are saying that they want, for example, educational arrangements to be such that everyone doesn’t have to develop at the same age and the same time. That there should be a pace that is taken into account.
“They want a more holistic education,” he said. ”They don’t want to be prepared for a job that will be just one job and made redundant. They want to be prepared for movement between jobs and occupations and to be able to change direction.”
Listen: In part 2, the President talks about the highlights of his first year in office, the demands of the job and the bend in his knee!
The President outlined some of the practical solutions that young people had offered including for civics to be taught more at second level as well as introduction of philosophy in secondary schools.
There were calls too from young people for unfinished housing estates to be finished and handed back to communities.
“In a curious way, it’s [the working document from the project] a more reflective piece than you would find from some very serious and often pretentious interviews with those who you feel could tell us what the Irish economy is all about,” he said.
On his first year in office, the president said that he had changed protocols in order to allow people to speak more freely with him at public events and said that he would continue to visit parts of the country where he felt his presence would help.
“I decided very deliberately that I would use the first two years in particular to go to communities where the presence of the President might make a difference,” he said.
The Being Young and Irish initiative is part of what he described as a “transformative agenda” that he had undertaken while at the same time continuing to respect the constitutional limits of his office, which he acknowledged almost immediately on his election last year when he resigned from the Labour Party.
Given the considerable coverage this past week of the controversial death of Savita Halappanavar at Galway University Hospital, TheJournal.ie asked if it would be possible to discuss the matter with the President.
However he cited the constitutional limits of his office as a reason for his wish not to discuss the case.
But Higgins said there had been no interference from government in any of the speeches he has given or other public engagements in the past 12 months.
“I’ve not been asked to curb anything,” he said, adding that he does not feel he must refrain from speaking his mind on issues concerning Irish society.
Listen: In part 3, the President discusses his views on Twitter, his Kindle, The Gathering, and his plans for 2013…
As an example, he said: “If there was legislation for in relation to say the minimum wage, I don’t interfere there with legislation. But I can and do feel free to speak about poverty, to speak about inequality, to speak about mental health and so on.”
Higgins also spoke about his now infamous confrontation with Tea Party commentator Michael Graham on Newstalk radio two years ago, a recording of which recently went viral around the world.
“People reported to me that it got as far as 1.82 million [views] and I was quite astonished,” he said. “You’d be surprised at the kind of people who played it. I met the Dean of the Harvard Law School at an event in the Abbey Theatre and he asked me about it.”
Higgins said he received over 250 messages about the recording, which he said was “in my previous life”, recently, only six of which referred to his use of the word ‘wanker’ to describe Graham.
The President said that 2013 will be a year in which he explores the broad theme of ethics including “is there such a thing as ethical economics?”
With Ireland’s presidency of the European Union he expects to be busy and hopes to return the State visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland last year by visiting the UK either late next year or early in 2014.
Asked whether he felt that he could continue at the pace he has set in his first year, he concluded: “I’ve found something that I hope every citizen experiences and that is the more you do, the energy comes and the energy that is needed for anything is always found there. Really, we’re only ever using a fraction of our possibilities. So I am flying along!”
It’s 2014 and people still don’t take videos in landscape mode….
It should be a crime punishable by death.
That helps my fear of flying
Pussies
“We were eating and all the food just flew up in the air and pretty much bounced off and fell,”
Whatever you might say about them, Americans never lose their sense of priority.
Judging by what I’m seeing around Dublin this week I’d say Irish people have similar priorities.
Prayers are great for turbulence and bad wind I find…
Imagine if the lights were off and the cabin was black. Now that would be scary. Scientific weather planes fly into hurricanes. Turbulance does not really effect the performance of an airplane, tis a bit like a car driving on unpaved really uneven ground. Saying that I would be defo a little nervous if twas me there.
Doesn’t help my fear either and I don’t care how brave you think you are at flying, when you are in a plane that is flying through severe turbulence or being struck by lightning it’s bloody frightening and you will remember every time you get on a plane after that. I always say that it’s not a plane crash that scares me, it’s turbulence and what you go through while it’s happening, horrible….
While everybody around him prayed to their gods and made promises about what they’d do if they got out of this alive, camera guy was praying to the god of youtube views
‘C’MON BABY! LAND THIS BIRD! GIMME THEM LIKES N SHAAARESZ!’
Brilliant, Cap’n!
Thank you, Mary!
All the same, it proves just how robust these aircraft really are. I do feel sorry for people who are a tad nervous flying, turbulence like this must be terrifying.
I’d s##t my pants if i was on that plane.
The engineering that goes into commercial airplanes will easily handle such perceived violent levels of turbulence, such as in this video. Modern plane structures are built to handle ferocious forces up to 150% stronger than any wind pattern experienced in the last 40 years of flying, and that includes any lightening strikes.
I just wasted 3 minutes of my life FFS !!
Fxxk me, that’s terrifying and brings back memories from the early 80′s of travelling to school on the old CIE bone shaker busses, I made need counselling
It will be alri ted is out on the wing with the sticky tape
News just in: the number of aircraft that have crashed due to turbulence has been found to be ZERO.
In the history of air travel no plane has ever crashed due to turbulence. Still it seems like they had a scary experience.
Mind you, it sounds like one mad aul wan doing all the roaring.
Ps- pilots rock
Cough, cough… this Air France crash in 2009 had nothing to do with turbulence! It resulted from how the cockpit crew dealt with a blocked pitot tube which is a sensor and sends speed data to the pilot’s instrumentation. The crash was a result of how the pilots dealt with faulty instrumentation and poor cockpit communication. The only other accident cited is a BOAC plane in 1966, 48 years ago! Your link only validates Steven’s point that 1, crashes are rare, and 2. Turbulence plays a miniscule part in modern aviation, unless you want to include windsheer on descent. Turbulence is a part of every flight. You’d need to go back decades to find incidences of turbulence directly resulting in the loss of a large aircraft.
Terrifying stuff. Even worse if your family was on board but you were seated away from them
A bit of communication from the folk in the pointy bit would have calmed the passengers.
Imagine sitting there not knowing if the next bump was a mountain …
Exactly what I was thinking. The captain should have been reassuring passengers to keep them calm. Not doing his job very well.
Oh dear he might have been to busy making a difficult emergency landing…
He landed the bleedin thing you nut.
Would u like him to come out and rub people’s foreheads as well?
Emergency landing? Its severe turbulence. Any pilot worth his salt would be well used to this scenario. Most passengers only experience light to moderate turbulence so that is why it can be scary for them (understandably). Planes these days are built to withstand extreme turbulence. This probably happens quite regularly but nobody videos it. The pilot should have reassured people over the intercom. The media doesn’t help with dramatic emergency landing headlines.
Some right smug condescending smartarses out today.
The people that are paid to fly the effin thing might know what they are at and smug f****** like you might know what they are at but there are nervous passengers that clench at every bump.
Think before you type.
I experienced this turbulence before coming home from new york absolutely cacked myself, last transatlantic flight I’ve took.
Drinks trolley would be the only thing on my mind
And 2 parachutes ??
I’ve created more turbulence in an Irish pub with rear end gaseous emissions then these screaming hyenas have had to endure here.
At 2.02 in the video… “Why is he not talking to us?”..maybe it’s because he’s trying his hardest to fight the turbulence and not let the plane fly out of control??????!!!!
The video is towards the end of the turbulence after the Captain had made the decision to divert to Japan out of the storm. Pilots rarely ‘fight’ poor conditions in manual flight mode. That’s stuff for the movies. They leave it to the FMS Auto Pilots which combined usually work far better at controlling an aircraft’s speed, altitude and balance. In fact some airline procedures prohibit the pilots from taking manual control unless the auto pilot kicks outs during flight.
Sounds more like a big orgy with all the noises…
I’d say the stench was rotten after that
Probably have prayed myself,even though I don’t believe in any God.
Recorded with a potato .
Recorded by a potato. ..
Regardless of whether the seat belt sign goes off while flying I always leave it on while seated,The reason being CAT (Clear Air Turbulence ) it cannot be picked up by radar.
Normally it occurs over large mountain ranges and can make a plane drop suddenly,Lifting people out of their seats hitting the overhead luggage bins.
Even in the cruise flight crews leave the lap belt on at the pointy end.
Normally CAT would have been reported by other planes on the same route
*I’m going to die. Quick get the camera. One to look back on in years to come eh? Oh wait…*
‘Twas a rollercoaster of a ride
I bet half of you pussies would shit your pants if this happened, big men behind the computer…priceless
Maybe it was caused by the lad who had his phone turned on and recording a video during the flight????
I was kinda hoping someone would go for a pee but it might have ruined the camera guys big moment.
They say flying is the safest form of transport but yet I’ve been watching Air Crash Investigation on a daily basis for a couple of years now !
imagine watching car crash investigation so.
Link to the video ? The one in the article says it’s been removed by user,
I’m terrified of flying. I’ve flown a good deal around the world none the less. I’ve got claustrophobia to, that doesnt help. Flying is hours of sheer scary boredom where you feel every bump and turn and can sense the changes in speed and direction. Other people panicking when you hit turbulence is the worst, panic spreads in such a confined space. You need the pilot to explain what is happening and his reassurance that it isnt as bad or as dangerous as how it feels. Flown to Cuba twice, on 3 of the 4 flights there were quite scary incidents. Every time i get off a plane i swear i’ll never get on another one.
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