We should be honest about death - End-of-life issues avoided

ONE of the abiding but unfortunate practices in Irish life is that if you must say something say nothing. 

That dishonest sidestepping is at play in the Fine Gael leadership race. The vaguest, feel-good generalities are offered in a way that ensures any audience can interpret those promises in almost any way they might wish. Specifics are verboten. Detailed policies are seen as hostages to fortune rather than targets to be pursued rigorously and with courage. It may be unfair to level that charge at the contenders because they are doing no more than observing one of our cultural defence systems — avoid confrontation, avoid challenging issues, defer and delay. We are so good at it that the process has been honoured in the vernacular — “we kick the can down the road”.

We’ve done it for decades on abortion, even if the Citizens’ Assembly might have brought that issue to a head. We do it on immigration because we don’t want to be silenced by accusations of racism or Islamophobia. We will dodge that hard but inevitable conversation until it is too late — if it is not so already. We occasionally get animated about white collar crime but the fury abates and nothing changes.