Michael D. Higgins was sworn in as Ireland's new president on Friday, with the 70-year-old poet and intellectual vowing to heal the country's economic and social wounds. In a service at Dublin Castle filled with prayer and song, the veteran politician said it was "time to turn to an older wisdom" in rebuilding Ireland's battered economy. He called for the creation of a republic founded on community spirit instead of individual materialism.
During his seven-year term in the largely ceremonial role, he pledged to help repair the damage caused by Ireland's financial crisis which led the EU member state to seek an international bailout last November. Dignitaries filled Dublin Castle's splendid Saint Patrick's Hall for the showpiece ceremony, which culminated in Higgins signing the declaration of office and receiving the seal. His two immediate predecessors, Mary Robinson and the outgoing Mary McAleese, sat behind him, with Prime Minister Enda Kenny to his right.
In a speech alternating between English and Irish, Higgins said his would be a presidency of "transformation." Ireland needed to close a chapter "that has left us fragile as an economy, but most of all wounded as a society, with unacceptable levels of unemployment, mortgage insecurity, collapsing property values and many broken expectations," he said.
The republic must turn the corner on "that which has failed, that which was not the best version of ourselves as a people, and open a new chapter based on a different version of our Irishness." Higgins said "egotism based on purely material considerations" had been the source of Ireland's economic and social woes. "Now it is time to turn to an older wisdom that, while respecting material comfort and security as a basic right of all, also recognises that many of the most valuable things in life cannot be measured.
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