October 31st should go down in history as the day of the biggest crime wave in Ireland's history. And though lawlessness reached unprecedented proportions, there was - so far as I could see - no mention made of this in the media anywhere. We are all so habituated to double standards, to laws not being laws, that we no longer know black from grey, charcoal from white or snow from coal; we have ceased to see the flagrant, the blatant, the brazen.
It's a criminal offence to import fireworks into the Irish Republic. It's a criminal offence to set them off without a licence. Yet last Thursday we saw a vast open-air fireworks display across the country, in every city, town and village. For the first time ever, Hallowe'en resembled an English Guy Fawkes night.
Garda response
Over the entire holiday period, and apart from one seizure of fireworks in Dublin, I am aware of no major interception of fireworks, though they must have been crossing the Border in vast lorries: what are they called - pyrotechnicons? Indeed, perhaps the most memorable Garda response to the illegal importation of these devices was advice about how to use them safely. The force even laid on a nice picture-shoot to back the message up.
This is simply bizarre. When the League to Save Catholic Ireland From Sex campaigned against the legalisation of condoms in the 1980s, did it also give photographic advice about how to put a condom on? Did Padraig Pearse Mac Huimbuig, the League Founder and Life President, proudly star in the lead role - "firstly take your erect penis so" - ably assisted by the nimble League secretary, Immaculata Goretti Impenetrata Ni hOulihan? Did Immaculata then roundly denounce the importation of vibrators, before putting on a live demonstration on how to use one? Then, matters having been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and with a few tears in her eyes and a small, lingering smile on her face, did she proceed to call for the Government to act now against these insidious devices, which, she thundered, would destroy the moral fabric of Irish women, and make them all blind?
Still, the unusual response of the Garda to the issue of the use of fireworks was no doubt the sensible one. It's better to give sound advice to the majority population on how to light a banger successfully, and without slaying your infants or the widow next door, than to pretend that only a tiny criminal minority of people in the State will ever use them. Common sense, in part, has prevailed.
But once again we are confronted by the vast dissonances between law and popular practice, as if the former were merely an aspirational guide to personal behaviour, to be only fitfully applied, and even then for exemplary purposes only. So if some poor unfortunate bastard who was caught for having fireworks illegally gets clobbered for doing what almost everyone else is doing, this serves largely as a public reminder that the law is still on the statute books.
Risible farrago
This villain and his villainous deeds, and the heroic seizure of a single consignment of fireworks, will most likely make it into that risible farrago that is called the Garda Commissioner's Annual Report. But in its annual assessment of crime, will that same report mention that over the same period, tens - if not hundreds - of thousands of people broke the law in an orgy of uninterrupted criminality? Will Hallowe'en feature at all in the annual crime figures statistics for Ireland?
Dáil Éireann could, of course, simply remove the ridiculous prohibition on fireworks from the criminal code. The benefits would be huge: for what the State authorises, it can then regulate, test and tax, outlawing the more dangerous and unreliable fireworks and meanwhile raising revenue.
Why doesn't it do this? A still small voice murmurs in the dark: because if the State allowed the importation of fireworks, might it then not become legally liable for whatever accidents must inevitably occur? And might that be the reason why the removal of an obsolete and unworkable law has not occurred? A pretty basic liberty is thus being denied by the ninnyish timidity of nanny government and the carnivorous hydra of litigation law.
Ruling the roost
Who advises the Government on whether or not to change the law? Lawyers. Who will sue the Government if the law leads to the unintended but certain consequence of casualties resulting from fireworks? Lawyers. Who will defend the Government in such circumstances? Lawyers. Who will set the astonishing fees to be paid to counsel on each side in such matters? Lawyers. And at every turn, who now rules the political roost? Lawyers.
Yes, we're back to this again, as tribunals proliferate, and the legal whirligig creates a new caste of nouveaux riches at public expense unlike anything seen since the land confiscations of the 17th century. The ballot box means almost nothing any more; Dáil pronouncements are virtually irrelevant. Governance of the country is now performed by lawyers and by professional officials, advised by lawyers. Elected representatives are reduced to being clientelist technicians in their constituencies, fiddling with the system like a plumber at old pipes, trying to extract more State benefits for their constituents.
We have abandoned the ambition to have open and accountable government at every level; instead we have rule by lawyer and official. And we do not complain. Why should we? The Celtic Tiger has given us our bread; and Hallowe'en night is our circus.