WE MUST begin to examine the possibility that Irish society has become too personal; it is a factor in our decline. Last week brought us the spectacle of a priest shaking hands with a convicted sex offender but not with the victim, on the grounds, the priest said, that "I don't know her". Yesterday, a bishop's resignation was mourned and his record defended by his brother – not by his brother bishops, mind you, but by his real-life, biological brother, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
But we should not concentrate exclusively on the Catholic Church when examining this matter – although the Catholic Church at the moment is making something of a fetish of walking into the guns – because all of Irish life is far too personal, and this is a destructive thing. Take the bankers, for example, who have become indistinguishable from the bishops in their attitude to resigning their posts, as well as their lofty attitude to the rest of us. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” is not always an appropriate defence, particularly when it comes from senior executives in sophisticated organisations which have a very grave impact on the lives of the public.
It is really interesting that in Irish banking and in the Irish Catholic Church – two bodies which were once so fond of telling the rest of us how to behave and in refusing us all kinds of credit – there is no concept of communal responsibility. There is a decided shortage of shame. There is apparently no sense that when a system is shown to have been criminally negligent, those running it should resign. The motto of both these groups should read – perhaps in Latin – “It’s all about me”.
Strangely enough, any poor benighted member of the public who ever complained in an Irish shop, or to any public service, knows this in their heart. The first thing that happens when you raise a question about the goods or services provided is that the person you are talking to, no matter how senior they are, says: “I wasn’t here that day.” The important things is to step out of the way of trouble, to distance yourself from a fallible system as swiftly as possible.
Irish medicine is like feudal Japan in the complexity of the personal contacts needed to negotiate it. The intelligence and energy devoted to even getting an appointment with a consultant, to jumping the outpatient queue, is very great indeed. If your neighbour’s niece works in the hospital admissions section, so much the better. But, most importantly, you and your relatives must be very careful not to annoy the medical staff with complaints or questions, or by not being grateful enough.
This year, a consultant refused to treat journalist Nell McCafferty for a life-threatening condition on grounds she had been rude to his secretary. Nell McCafferty wasn’t grateful enough – but then, she is from the North.
We need hardly elaborate here on the result of the personal touch in the planning process around the country: small villages ruined, flood plains built upon, and the profession of auctioneering brought further into disrepute. And there’s no point in rehearsing the old clientelist-politics-is- ruining-the-country routine, which has been playing for so long. Although it is interesting to know that people petition not only their own parliamentary representatives but travel sometimes hundreds of miles to petition whichever deputy might be the relevant Cabinet Minister, at his or her constituency clinic, in another part of the country. This is the personal brought to another level entirely: it is positively medieval.
The thing is that it is terribly tiring living in a country where everyone has to be wheedled and humoured and seduced into doing the job that they are being paid to do anyway. It’s so draining keeping everyone on side. It’s so humiliating to think that the provision of public services depends on individual whim. This is usually the time of year at which a lot of schoolteachers get a nice bottle of wine; it would be interesting to know how those donations hold up this year.
In defending his brother Donal Murray, who resigned last week as the Bishop of Limerick, journalist Paddy Murray turned in fury on his own profession, accusing us – quite rightly, I'm sure – of sloppiness and venom, a peculiarly Irish combination. But he also, in his article in yesterday's Sunday World, said Donal Murray was "cast aside by members of the clergy who displayed an utter lack of Christianity and a complete disregard for facts, decency, forgiveness, tolerance and compassion". In other words the system, in this case the system of the Catholic Church, had let Donal Murray swing. That is why his brother had to defend him in public, because Donal Murray had no other protection. And here we have the kernel of the problem.
In Ireland our systems are so lousy, our management is so appalling, our morality so non-existent, that our only recourse is the personal, the family, the tribe. Events after the conviction for sexual assault of Danny Foley of Listowel demonstrate the unedifying results of this belief : local is everything, there is no objective morality – and what happens to outsiders is none of our business.