People in glasshouses - Cure disease not just the symptoms

IF all goes according to script the annual report of the Anglo Irish Bank will be published this afternoon. If it is anything like as incendiary as we have been led to expect, it might be a good idea to anticipate a few days of high dudgeon and outraged commentary.

It matters not a single Oireachtas envelope that this outrage may be justified or barely contained. It may not even matter a second Oireachtas envelope that the publication might confirm that an amoral clique of businessmen were not satisfied with the very best opportunities this State ever offered any of its citizens.

Even if they had confined themselves to dealings that observed decent banking rules, they could have become richer than more or less every Irish person who ever lived. Many of them are, but that was not good enough. They wanted much more and felt unconstrained by any sort of ethic as they pursued end-of-the-rainbow ambitions. By so doing they led us all into this sorry mess. Or so today’s received wisdom goes.

As an outline, this analysis may pass muster but maybe there’s more, maybe there’s a subtext we should all consider. Were we all at least bit players in the shabby, corrupting drama? Is it possible that until we recognise this and change our ways, we are all condemned to the mercy of the next market, banking or political outrage?

Maybe this afternoon, as our blood pressure soars, we should ask ourselves a wider, challenging question... was the bankers’ behaviour exceptional or just extreme?

It was probably just extreme.

Though it gets harder by the day to accept that the kind of dodgy behaviour that sustained the mirage of Irish banking is anything other than routine, we must believe that somewhere in this country someone with real power observes the ethics required by a functioning society. We must believe Anglo Irish was exceptional.

It’s far easier to argue that bankers’ unacceptable behaviour is just an extreme form of the indifferent, blinkered, careless, cruel, selfish and brutish behaviour we all see around us every day.

Already this week, in what may seem a small, unimportant thing in these days of economic collapse, we saw an act of public barbarism that would not be tolerated in any half-civilised society.

The unforgivable destruction, by Killarney Golf and Fishing Club, of a line of 160-year-old lime trees — lime trees can live to be 600 years old — because they “were a nuisance... and were a danger to golf buggies” says a lot more than is comfortable about our country.

That this act of vandalism was carried out on the shores of a once-beautiful lake system that has been turned into a huge, polluted waste water plant because of abject planning and water treatment failures only adds to the sense that systematic failure is destroying this country. That those in the golf club who sent for the chainsaws will face no meaningful censure really says it all. Killarney should not feel victimised by these observations, destruction like this can be seen in every parish in the country. To someone who has lost a job this may seem trite but this dishonest, indifferent and blind mind-set is at the heart of most of our difficulties.

Already this week, and in recent months too, we have seen people in need of psychiatric attention in court for the most serious crimes. We have heard of a disorientated and distressed woman dying alone in a ditch and her family left without any meaningful explanation. We have heard of mothers abusing or murdering children because the appropriate interventions were not made.

Why? Because we do not provide the services these very human tragedies demand. Is ignoring our fellow citizens’ terrible and urgent health needs any worse or better than breaking banking laws?

We can all relate stories about our two-tier health system where some, like Susie Long’s, cost lives. Equally, and no matter what some unions blindly argue, we have two-tier employment and pension schemes. Just ask the former Waterford Crystal workers left without pensions.

These are all huge issues but they will not be resolved unless we all find a new sense of honesty and obligation. Yesterday, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan told us we are fighting for our economic future. In reality, we are fighting for much more. We are fighting for a decent society where equity and sanity prevail. One where we can expect the protection and services a modern democracy should provide its citizens.

This afternoon we may all be outraged by the Anglo Irish report but that document will just relate the symptoms of the disease hanging over this country. This disease will not be cured by changing one tribe of politicians for another — that is the only choice we are offered. We must make other choices for ourselves.

We must put honesty and equity before everything.