Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson has said that the nation is angry and hurting as a result of the country’s economic woes.

Speaking to the Daily Maverick in Johannesburg, the human rights activist said the Irish are in a process of reinventing themselves.

“Ireland is not in a good place at the moment,”Robinson told the newspaper.“People are angry and they are hurting.”

“We have our own humiliation of losing our economic sovereignty, and we're now regaining it slowly and painfully,” the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

 “The government is aware that it has to take very hard and difficult decisions.”

“They blame the relatively few who caused this economic mess - the greedy developers and the bad bankers, and yet it's often the poorest who are suffering more.”

The first female president of Ireland said the downturn has brought back some of the countries core values.

“[In] towns and villages around Ireland we're going back to doing what served us well.”
“People are more neighborly. They are more willing to volunteer.”

The former senator predicted that Ireland will eventually make a strong recovery.

“We're going to come back stronger; we now will not make those mistakes again.”