President Michael D Higgins has criticised the “arrogant assumption” that economic expansion can be perpetual and sustainable, and called instead for fresh thinking and new institutions that reflect the growing global challenges on climate and economics.

Mr Higgins told the 10th debt management meeting of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) that Ireland’s recent experiences, while largely specific to our system, had come with a “huge social cost” and had triggered a “welcome debate” on such issues.

Drawing a line from Geneva to the climate talks in Paris and back to the recent New York agreement on sustainable development goals, Mr Higgins said our “vulnerable planet” was at a “crucial juncture” in 2015.

Tackling these disparate, yet interlinked challenges required addressing their common failing, he said: that the old model – of extracting and consuming resources, or prioritising debt repayments over basic social needs – posed a threat to the environment and social cohesion and was no longer fit for purpose.

“That such a version of our lives together could, or should, be made available across all spaces and cultures was an assumption that was in its origin, arrogant, and is today unsustainable,” he said in his keynote address to delegations from more than 80 countries, in Geneva to discuss debt management and sustainable development matters.

In a wide-ranging address, Mr Higgins said the single globalisation model, with its “uncontested assumptions” had encouraged a blindness that historians will later highlight as the foundation of failure.

Mr Higgins asked rhetorically whether globalisation had given due attention to moral and social issues or merely cleared the way for an “unregulated free march of an expanding and increasing speculative, and not necessarily productive, capital?”

Global problems required a different universal agreement based on solutions that were not weighted to favour “vulture funds over social impact arguments”. This was a debate to which Ireland was interested in contributing, following its recent crisis experiences.

Ireland had learned of the need for sustainable public finances and Mr Higgins expressed hope that, having addressed structural deficiencies in the Irish economy, Ireland would now “put in place a sustainable recovery and repair the damage to our public services and institutions”.

Fundamental questions

As Ireland and the EU emerged from crisis, however, they faced fundamental democratic questions over the competence of member states to control their own finances.

“What we can see across Europe is a fundamental questioning of what the role of the State now is in such circumstances,” he said, witnessed by the socialisation of debt and widening social inequality.

“What were the old characteristics of the south [developing world] are now visible as inequality and poverty in ‘the south within the north’,” he said, “and elite accumulation in the south might be called ‘the north within the south’”.

Growing public awareness that these issues are interlinked, he said, was driving debate over a “social floor”: a collection of non-negotiable core social goods including adequate levels of food, health education, participation.

Only after all of these had been provided for could the “debt discourse” be allowed to begin, he said, and the market allowed in.

The debate over global economic development – in particular global debt – is an issue that affects us all, Mr Higgins said, and thus must move beyond the corridors of the IMF and World Bank.

Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, secretary general of the UN conference, thanked Mr Higgins for his “intellectual leadership over many years” and his “consistency of thinking outside the box”.

Eight years since the global financial crisis, Mr Kituyi warned, global debt had continued to balloon and unsustainable debt had once again become a threat to development gains.

“Unsustainable private debt has a habit of ending up on public sector balance sheets, a link not limited to developing country alone, as the example of Ireland shows,” he said.

Mr Higgins reiterated Ireland’s commitment to helping developing countries restructure their debt. Despite Ireland’s difficult domestic economic circumstances it had worked to ensure additional funds from debt relief were used on programmes that benefit the poor.

Refugees

Looking to France and Belgium, Mr Higgins urged for the careful use of words and images, a clear distinction between refugees fleeing terror and those causing the terror and a clear refusal to allow them to “dislodge” western achievements, such as universal human rights.

Mr Higgins warned against the long-term consequences of widespread intelligence collection and sharing, warning it risked “becoming something far more dangerous and destabilising” than intended at first.

“It is a time for care,” he said in Geneva. “We must co-operate with wisdom and we must be careful that the language we use gives us assurance rather than succour to those who want to engender destabilisation.”