To judge from the astonished outcry of the past week or so, you'd think that immigrants, who had been hitherto ignorant of the central truths of political life in this country, had suddenly seized all the main commentary positions in the media and in politics. These newcomers seem to be everywhere, questioning traditional standards of Irish political life, writes Kevin Myers
Why, I'm tempted to start a campaign to put a halt to all immigration - not soon, not next week, but now, before all comment suggests that the accepted norm in Irish life down the decades has been probity and transparency.
Certainly, a great many interfering immigrant snoopers must have been reading the reports from the Flood tribunal, and expressing astonishment and disbelieving anger at what has been revealed within it. And what is truly amazing about this astonishment is that it is so widespread, clearly indicating that huge numbers of these foreigners are suddenly monopolising public discourse.
Certainly, the immigrants seem to have grabbed all the media jobs for themselves. They also seem to have got themselves elected in large numbers to Dáil Éireann. Indeed, they have managed to dominate the commenting classes everywhere. They must be the most successful immigrant community in world history.
Revelled in hypocrisy
However, some of us have been around a little longer than these newly arrived and charmingly naïve commentators, who are so genuinely amazed at the extent of the corruption in Irish life. We other few, a tiny minority of us, remember that other time, before the deluvian Flood, when the Irish electorate embraced with an almost coital lust those politicians who overtly revelled in hypocrisy, lies, corruption, deceit, jobbery, and even terrorism.
There was never a second in the past 40 years when Charles Haughey was not a visibly corrupt man, with visibly corrupt cronies, who visibly corrupted everything they touched. Irish life was contaminated through and through, visibly, from the apex downwards; however, that apex had actually been formed from the bottom up.
The Irish people wanted corrupt politicians who fixed things and enriched themselves; and they got them. Charles Haughey and his filthy gang were not visitors from Mars, but the creation of the Irish people, the very people who are now sitting down in small baffled circles, throwing dust in the air and crying in disgusted amazement at the Flood revelations.
Good actors
Still, there's one thing which could be said about the Irish electorate: it deserves the Nobel Prize for Dissimulation for its theatrical performance over recent days. We've shown ourselves to be good actors. Perhaps the only other real revelation about Ireland from Flood was our apparent need for an obvious truth to be authorised from on high before it becomes indisputable: for every other revelation in Flood was at the very least broadly known about.
Here is the central reality. This has been a deeply diseased society for decades, one in which corruption, accompanied by a knowing wink and a beguiling smirk, were the currency of political acceptability. And we all knew this. All of us. We all knew that local government was corrupt; we knew that many TDs survived by arranging favours and by evading the law.
The only great truth that Flood has confirmed is that there is no generally accepted truth, no matter how obvious it is to us all, which can be accepted as an authentic truth unless it is validated by some higher authority.
That authority used to come from bishops; now their day is gone, and their place has been taken by tribunal judges. Mitres have surrendered to wigs; but the old game continues. A truth is not a truth, no matter how profoundly we personally know it to be true, until is verified by some unelected grandee.
Whether Flood in full spate will finally form a watershed in Irish life, only time and tide will tell. However, we have known for years that some of our electorates have very strong stomachs indeed when it comes to corruption, bigotry or even condoning murder.
What other country in Europe could boast a line-up like some of the elected representatives this small republic can boast about? Take your pick: Arthur Morgan and Martin Ferris, convicted IRA terrorists. Michael Lowry, Liam Lawlor, Charles Haughey, Ray Burke, liars and crooks. Beverley Cooper-Flynn, tax-cheat. Neil Blaney senior, unrepentant apologist for the IRA.
Labour is not immune: witness former TDs Michael Bell, who called for Ulster Protestants to "go home" to Britain, and Declan Bree, who, in the aftermath of the Mullaghmore boating massacre of children and octogenarians, demanded the release of their killer; he was duly rewarded by the people of Sligo who elected him for the very constituency where the butchery had occurred.
Secret approval
These are the visible expression of what is rotten in Irish life - not merely tolerated, but actually approved by the electorate. When you see that grisly crew, and think of all the secret things that they imply, you have to ask: what do you have to do in Irish life to be disqualified from electoral acclaim? And where does it stop, this secret approval of things which are unsaid in public, but adverted to in some secret code, or joyously whispered behind the ditch? Only the pathologically naïve or the compulsively dishonest could have revelled in the paroxysms of indignant and astonished innocence that we have seen in the past week or so. And frankly, it has been quite nauseating.