St Patrick’s Day 2017: Celebrate by demanding more reform

FOR generations we, with a kind of mousy national pride diluted by crippling subservience, felt it was not a good thing to complain.

Complaining was unpatriotic, almost a fey, foreign self-importance.

Maybe we felt that by not complaining about an inedible meal, dreadful workmanship, grasping professionals or bully-boy clerics we celebrated the innate decency of what it meant to be Irish.

We felt that getting along was more important than getting what we deserved.

Maybe this pious stoicism sprang from this Republic’s foundation myths but things have changed.

We have learned how to complain because we have had to.

In too many spheres we were — and are — expected to accept that the slapdash is sufficient.

Maybe, on this St Patrick’s Day 2017, we should take a moment to update the balance sheet where we record life’s really important things.

Maybe we should ask ourselves if the positives outweigh the negatives.

Maybe we should ask ourselves if this small, relatively powerless but wealthy island is a good place in which to live; if we have built a decent society and if we are effectively confronting the issues that prevent it being a better, more reliable and equitable one.

We can’t say that we challenge the self-perpetuating privilege afforded by inherited wealth but then which society can?

We can’t say we have resolved the issues where the market and social obligation meet, a clash epitomised by our shameful housing crisis.

We can’t say that we are committed to challenging the institutional privilege that insulates organisations from the constraining force of accountability.

We can’t say that we express the outrage provoked by myriad scandals by demanding dissuasive sanctions. We can’t say we always champion the common good when faced with powerful lobbies but we are getting better at it.

We can, however, say this is a relatively safe country, that our children can safely walk to school and the idea of a tourist being raped and murdered is, if not unheard of, almost alien.

We can say, despite harrowing exceptions, that the majority of old people live in a protective environment. We can say that unemployment figures are at their lowest in a decade even if we question the quality of so many of today’s jobs.

We can say being poor in Ireland is very difficult but hopefully not as difficult as it once was. We can say, despite Tuam and Grace, this is a far more tolerant and celebratory society than the near-borstal theocracy of earlier decades.

We can say, even if our Taoiseach has to pretend that a racist is not a racist, that a Donald Trump would not be elected here.

We can say there is a core decency, one expressed just this week when the sympathy expressed after the Coast Guard helicopter crash was so obviously genuine.

It is not necessary to pretend huge issues we face are less important than they are to celebrate Ireland today. Maybe those celebrations might be more alive if we were more successful delivering reform.

However, we should also celebrate the fact we have become such forceful complainers because complaining is no more than a negative expression of ambition, a demand that things get better. Let’s finish St Patrick’s work, let’s keep driving the snakes out!