This statement, delivered in a conference paper compiled by Social Justice Ireland (Healy et al, 2014, including two of Ireland's most respected anti-poverty campaigners over several decades), is a profound indictment of the Irish welfare state. The case made rests on an absence of a coherent vision and set of values, such as justice, decency and fairness, with which to underpin Ireland's social architecture. Fr Sean Healy and Sr Brigid Reynolds had previously referenced this theme at the social policy conference in 30 September 1988 (Reynolds and Healy, 1988), warning against a growing social divide and the consequences of models of development driven by economic growth and wealth creation at the expense of social equality. This approach has, arguably, produced a residual welfare state. In this process, social citizenship and public welfare are disconnected, with the poor forming a residual class in a consumer society, where wealth and privilege increasingly define citizenship and entitlement. This is despite the official rhetoric of social partnership, which dominated the policy agenda between 1987 and 2007.

Ultimately, what Healy et al (2014) are referring to is the developmental consequences of promoting a competitive market model, rather than the widely accepted Keynesian welfare state model. Michelle Norris (2016: 203-60) has characterised this developmental phase as the ‘marketisation’ of the Irish welfare state. Her description captures the uniqueness of the Irish model in Europe and its resemblance to East Asian welfare state models (Norris, 2016: 266).