At election time, the one certain staple of political commentary in every medium will be about the astonishing intelligence of the Irish people in the manner in which we use proportional representation. This is such an enduring feature of our self-assessment that to question it is to invite the allegation of national self-hatred.
So be it. But what, please, is remotely intelligent about anything in the way we conduct ourselves? From the dismal politics of Jackie Healy-Rae to the FAI bid to host the European Soccer Championship, our public life is dogged by a diseased hybrid of compulsive mediocrity and arrant boastfulness. We are so third-rate that we can't see the ranks of the second-rate far over the horizon; and we take that as evidence that we are in the lead.
Self-congratulatory blather
Why is our public life so disordered, so dysfunctional, so utterly inept? Northern Ireland's television services produce more challenging and interesting programmes in a week than Telefís Éireann does in an entire year; yet to listen to the self-congratulatory blather from so many presenters in Montrose, one would think we're getting good value for our colossal licence fees.
To be sure, it's so easy to criticise RTÉ; but that's not the source of our problem, merely a fair an honest reflection of the way public life is conducted in this country. From the stockpiling of Luas engines in the Red Cow depot, paid for on delivery years before they will ever be used, to the utterly pathetic inability to signpost anything properly anywhere, the conduct of our public life is quite scandalous.
If it had been mere chutzpah which had driven our claim to be the joint host of the European Soccer Championship, it would at least have possessed the quality of daring, of nerve, of adventure: who dares wins. It wasn't anything of the kind. It was bone-headed stupidity, and the arrogance which comes so easily to the truly cretinous. How else could the FAI and Government have boasted that we would build a brand new stadium by 2008, when we'd have trouble baking a biscuit by that time? We could have put a man on the Moon for the money that the Beef Tribunal cost us; and what did we get for all that money? Well, we got a pudding of report which probably sweetened its author's path to the post of Chief Justice.
Road deaths
We are approaching the end of the year 2002, and only now are serious measures being taken to cut down on speeding, though it has been evident for years that high speeds on wretchedly bad roads is the major cause of our appalling statistics for road deaths. Years and years went by, and governments did nothing; indeed, Michael Smith, the man who did most to increase the aggregate speed of vehicles by raising the speed limit on even the tiniest country lanes, and thereby on an actuarial basis must have increased the numbers of roads deaths, went on to do for the efficiency of the Defence Forces what he had done for road safety. His reward was secure re-election every time.
You can do a tour over Irish life and find wastefulness, ineptitude, corruption and self-regarding vanity the very sustenance of existence. The Eastern Health Board spends €2,000 a week on bottled water for its staff; the second helicopter for the Garda has been sitting at a British airport for two years; a fresh illegal dump is found almost every week in Wicklow; public transport across Ireland is an affront to decency; Mountjoy Jail is the biggest centre of heroin use in the country.
Draw up your own litany: it's easy - a perusal of any day's newspaper headlines will do. Even more disturbing than those failings is the almost seeming absence of a compelling morality in public affairs. It's one thing for people to fulminate anonymously on Joe Duffy - actually, one of the most important forums of public opinion in Irish life - but quite another to do so without such protection. How vocal would the anger at the release of Dessie O'Hare have been if callers had had to give their names and addresses? (And how diseased is a "peace process" which allows a serial killer like him unconditional freedom?)
Safe sanctuary
A larger question remains. When they were on the run, how could O'Hare and his dismal crew of psychopaths and sexual perverts effortlessly have found hiding places with warm beds, though the entire resources of the State were after them? What values exist in this country that the unspeakably worst are given safe sanctuary, and will quite soon, be given safe conduct? And how great would have been the outcry have been from "liberal" Ireland had Dessie O'Hare been given his just desserts, and summarily been dealt with by the Rangers?
Sometimes the mob speaks the truth: the riots over Playboy of the Western World revealed an unconscious recognition that the play contained some horrible realities about Ireland. They are that the killer is - sneakingly anyway - highly regarded; the law is a nuisance; decency a needless intrusion; public duty a pious irrelevance.
The issue isn't that almost nothing in the public service works, or that the service is neither a service nor intended for the public. The issue is that there is no coherent public indignation at this betrayal of the people by the institutions of the State. What is all this but societal stupidity? It's time to dust down those thick-Paddy jokes; and this time round, they're justified.
KEVIN MYERS