I know nothing of, and therefore make no comment on, the absolute need for the mission in which the four Air Corps crew members were killed last week. But I doubt whether the rescued were better people than the four young men who died; and in that sense we have had a very bad trade indeed. But of course, there is and can be no trade for such as died in a Waterford fog last week. They belong to that extraordinary community of rescuers, who take it as a matter of course that they should risk their lives that other, less worthy individuals might live.
And of course, they have chosen to do this, and the decision is hardly a matter of singular and undiluted altruism: human motivation is a complex thing. No doubt there are other elements which impel such people to take mortal risks. But at bottom, being a member of the rescuing community comes down to a willingness to die for perfect strangers, to an acceptance that the rescuers' families walk behind a coffin so that the families of complete and utter strangers, who might well live lives of utter selfishness, be spared that devastating duty.
Ink-black night
It comes down to helicopter crews at midnight heading off over the Atlantic into a raging storm on a wild, ink-black night, flying by their radar alone, themselves invisible, themselves unrescuable.
One minute of that would cure most of us of any desire ever to fly again. These young men - and a couple of young women - do such things nightly. There might well be words to describe such courage; but I certainly do not know them.
What do we, as a state and as a people, owe these rescuers? We cannot repay them: no money on earth is a return for what they do. But what else is there?
There is this: we owe them respect, institutional respect. We owe them the assurance that for all our failings, we take them, and their lives, enormously seriously: that in daily offering their lives, they exact from us another and more easily discharged duty. Inasmuch as it is possible, we will give their young lives all the protection we can. And we will never, ever take them for granted.
We take them for granted now. How many inexperienced surfboarders go out without any back-up, presuming that Dun Laoghaire lifeboat (say) was called into existence solely for rescuing them from their recreations?
How many yachting crews set off in dangerous weather, knowing that if all goes wrong, there are people ready willing and able to pluck them from the water? How many people set off into the mountains in midwinter knowing that if they get into difficulties, somebody will come clambering after them to save them from the consequences of their idiocy?
Many. We are infested with fools, and one of the hallmarks of a civilised society is that it is prepared to risk the lives of its finest in order to save the lives of its most foolish.
Charge the foolish
But it is surely a very foolish society indeed which does not place a price on the services of the finest: which does not charge the foolish for the financial consequences of their foolishness.
Instead, the cost of rescuing the frivolous, the stupid, the idiotically reckless, the deliberately ignorant, is borne financially by the broader community and emotionally by the families of those who saved them.
This is not merely stupid. It is deeply irresponsible. It is subsidising delinquency; and as we have unfailingly discovered in other areas of life, humans repay subsidised behaviour, be it butter-production or rank folly, with more of the same. We learn to be careful in our personal conduct when we realise that the cost of getting it wrong is levied against our own account. We do this in all our daily transactions: except one - where we are taking risks with our own lives. And then we expect the nanny-state to come to our aid, risking the lives of the best that society can produce, at no cost to the rescued.
Moral blackmail
It is more than stupid, more than irresponsible: it is immoral. It is wholly wrong that members of the rescuing community should be morally blackmailed into risking their own lives to save the improvident and the imprudent, who almost certainly would not have put themselves in danger if they had been confident that they would have to bear in full the cost of the rescue mission. We subsidise folly, and the best we have are endangered as a result.
This we know. Without that subsidy, fishermen would not leave port, pleasure-cruisers would stay at anchor, amateur mountaineers would remain beside the hearth, if they thought they would have to pay the full price of rescue. And we would not then be playing fast and loose with the lives of our best, our bravest.
Dave O'Flaherty, Mick Baker, Paddy Mooney and Niall Byrne gave their young lives for others, and this country was vastly enriched by their services. We should be proud of them and their colleagues.
But did we do our duty to them as they did to us? And are we doing it to those who carry on the traditions and service of those gallant men? I wish I could say we were.