Denying the truth - Dishonesty is destroying this country

DISHONESTY is destroying our country. It is destroying social cohesion and making it even more difficult to rebuild an economy ruined by political, banking and individual dishonesty.

Our tolerance of institutionalised dishonesty is making it more and more difficult to be proud to be Irish. It is at the core of nearly every challenge we face and is undermining so much that used to be, and could be again, positive and energetic about this society.

It is the cancer turning the Irish psyche from something resilient, imaginative and warm into a cynical, browbeaten MacNation of people who feel they’ve been cheated and treated with contempt.

We have been patronised and lectured at by a dishonest and deeply hypocritical Catholic hierarchy. They, at last, have recognised that their behaviour was appalling and have promised that the future will be very different to the past. Though our bones might ache for this to be true, we must wait and see.

Our banks are discredited and despised in equal measure because they behaved in a way that may have satisfied our light-touch laws but drove a coach-and-four through the honesty that defines social responsibility. Their greed, and their manipulation of the greed of others, is one of the episodes in Irish life since we won independence that really questions how we have used the great privilege of political freedom.

We have seen our political process become a place where words have no meaning and where anything is possible as long as power is retained. No lie or delusion is deemed inadmissible, no principle inviable, as long as the grip on power holds steady.

Great blocks of intelligent and decent people speak as one when the tribe calls. It seems that it does not matter that the tribe is defending the indefensible. That is never the issue; power is always the only issue.

As Bertie Ahern put it more honestly than he might again: “Our ethics are to get in here and stay in here.”

Earlier this week 80 out of 149 politicians who voted on a motion of confidence in former Defence Minister Willie O’Dea used the honour of being able to vote in a parliamentary democracy to endorse the proposal.

Within 24 hours Mr O’Dea had resigned because the Green Party eventually concluded that a person who had through a High Court affidavit denied the truth, was not fit to be in ministerial office.

Had the Greens not had second thoughts, Fianna Fáil would yet again have succeeded in putting party before principle and endorsed the kind of behaviour that, in other jurisdictions, might end in a jail term.

Most of those who sit at the Cabinet table are perceptive, intelligent and decent people but by taking part in this charade they have shown how far along the road towards a destructive fantasy they have travelled.

This view is strengthened by the fact that several senior Fianna Fáil figures have, since the vote, accepted that Mr O’Dea’s behaviour was wrong. Yet they voted to support him. This hypocrisy discredits the individuals and makes a mockery of our politics.

Honesty is not the adherence to a rule book or some dry code of conduct. It is no more, and no less, than doing the right thing. It is imposing discipline on yourself and others because the alternative is chaos.

If we do not restore it to a central place in our society, our politics, our business and our personal behaviour, that is what we face.