Labour Party presidential candidate Michael D Higgins has described what he called "the model" represented by rival candidate Seán Gallagher as "ethically vacuous".
Saying he was "shocked" by the job losses in Aviva and about the situation where families had been forced to leave the Priory Hall apartments in Dublin due to their dangerous condition, Mr Higgins said the "common element" was "a model that didn’t have an ethical core".
Mr Higgins said during his campaign he had been "looking at the real economy on the ground" and meeting people "at the top of the export tree" but also those creating jobs in small numbers.
Mr Higgins said when he looked back over recent years, there had been "a very serious loss of trust" and that "language" had also let us down.
"The failure has been based on a radical individualism. What I meant by that is I was criticising a model of life where the only measure of a person was the wealth that they had accumulated."
Asked if Mr Gallagher had an "ethical core", Mr Higgins said: "I think that the model is ethically vacuous. I won’t speak about a person."
Asked again if he believed the model Mr Gallagher stood for was “ethically vacuous”, he said: "Yes, I do."
He said the model was “something that doesn’t really draw on the strings of the Irish people”. Asked if he were attacking or undermining the rival candidate, who currently has a higher poll rating, Mr Higgins said it was not a question of attacking "at all".
Referring to Mr Gallagher’s former role on the Fianna Fáil national executive, Mr Higgins said he also had other questions. He had been chairman of the executive of a party himself years ago, he said.
"I’d find it very hard to believe that one, if you disagreed profoundly with the assumptions that were guiding economic and social policy, that you wouldn’t try to turn the party around and that you wouldn’t try and change the policy."
Mr Higgins was also questioned on his opposition to aspects of US foreign policy over the years and about how this would be viewed by his counterparts in the US should he be elected.
He said he had opposed some of the "illegal foreign policy" of the Reagan period and had done so with the support of the American bishops. He had been praised for his human rights record by former US president Jimmy Carter, he said.
Describing Americans as a "warm, fine people", he said he knew that because he had lived and worked there. He did not regret opposing the Iraq war, he said.
Mr Higgins also said he had campaigned against extraordinary rendition of prisoners and everything he had said was on the record.
He rejected that he had supported Hamas militants. Asked about previous comments saying Hamas had been elected through free and fair elections in Gaza, Mr Higgins said: “I have never supported Hamas directly."
Mr Higgins said he had visited Gaza with other EU ministers and they were the first to go there after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. He said he had condemned the shelling of civilians, "unequivocally".
"If we are to have peace in the Middle East, Israel correctly aspires to a security that is endurable. Equally, on the other side, the Palestinians want a state that is contiguous - you can’t have two bits to it - and that enjoys full sovereignty."
Mr Higgins said so much more could have been achieved if there had been a permanent secretariat to the peace talks in the region as there had been in Northern Ireland.
"I have never been a spokesman for Hamas, ever," he said. He added he would not be able to express a view if he were elected president, but if there was to be enduring peace, Hamas would "have to be part of the talks".
