In the rotunda at City Hall in Dublin, there is a statue of a man with a model of a lighthouse at his feet. The man is Thomas Drummond, undersecretary of Ireland from 1835 to 1840. He died at 42, a premature death caused at least in part by overwork, writes Breda O'Brien.
Large numbers of mourners followed his coffin to Mount Jerome, such was the esteem in which the Irish people held this brilliant Scot who had arranged for the abolition of the hated and unjust tithes. Daniel O'Connell was his chief mourner. Drummond's daughters requested that an inscription be added to the plinth of his statue, which reads: "Property has its duties as well as its rights."
This saying of Drummond's was originally addressed to absentee landlords who were callously indifferent to the plight of their tenants. Drummond was a friend of Charles Bianconi, and indeed encouraged him to write the story of his famous horse-drawn cars, which at one time provided a highly efficient transport system throughout Ireland.
According to biographer Samuel Smiles, Bianconi had a similar attitude to wealth. "It is not money but the genius of money that I esteem; not money itself, but money used as a creative power," he once said. It is perhaps just as well for Drummond and Bianconi that they lived during the 19th century, for sentiments such as they expressed are likely to be met today with either cynicism or derision. Although a far from egalitarian age, there was a tradition that wealth carried responsibilities, including the responsibility to ensure that those less fortunate were looked after. This tradition came under siege from two opposing directions during the 20th century. When viewed through the prism of Marxism, philanthropy was condemned as mere alms given by the exploiters to the exploited in order to reduce their discontent. It also came under attack from the snapping jaws of capitalism, summed up by the "greed is good" credo of Gordon Gekko in the 1980s movie Wall Street.
By the way, Gekko's speech was modelled on a real speech by Ivan Boesky at the University of California's commencement ceremony in 1986: "Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself."
In Ireland, we were never overburdened by economic ideology, but we have managed to develop a neat catch-22 for anyone who is wealthy. They can choose between being condemned for not doing enough, or having any seemingly altruistic measures they suggest treated with deep suspicion. The most notable recent example is the consortium led by Noel Smyth that has offered to build a children's hospital. As a layperson, I am not qualified to judge whether it is really vital that it be on the same campus as an adult teaching hospital, but it does seem far more sensible that it be on the same site as a maternity hospital. Be that as it may, the overwhelming cynicism and ungraciousness with which the proposal was greeted was very disturbing.
Even if the proposal ultimately proves to be unworkable, did we have to drown it at birth in a barrel of vinegary cynicism? Perhaps it is because we have only recently acquired wealth that we have little tradition of "giving something back". It has existed for a long time in terms of personal service, in that many Irish people including the young have volunteered for work in developing countries and local situations of need. However, the somewhat different idea that wealth has "duties as well as rights" is an idea that has sadly atrophied. It meets with a great deal of hostile commentary from those who believe that the State is the only agent that should provide services such as hospitals.
We patently have a crisis in healthcare. The State is struggling and failing to deal with that crisis. If a group of wealthy individuals is willing to provide a state-of-the-art hospital without seeking to make a profit, I am grateful to it as a parent of children whom I fervently hope will never have need of such services.
There is a larger issue at stake here, which has to do with the corrosive impact of cynicism on our society in general. Cynicism has been defined as lacking the courage to hope. Why has it become the reflex response? As usual, around St Patrick's Day, we indulged in a discussion of what it means to be Irish. Is our most common national characteristic now a kind of detached irony, and a knowing cynicism?
Mark Little, fresh from his sojourn as RTÉ's Washington correspondent, thought so. In his book, Zulu Time, he refers to "the blocked-up mess of indigestible sarcasm and knowing mockery you face each time you open the Sunday newspapers or listen to an argument on radio". Or perhaps it is not our defining national characteristic, but merely the characteristic of so many commentators and so-called opinion-formers.
If we look at another upcoming event of national significance, the commemoration of 1916, there is a sizeable gap between how most Irish people regard it and how the revisionists would have us view it. The men and women of 1916 were largely motivated by idealism. They were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, that of losing their lives, for a dream. It is possible to tread a path between romanticism and cynicism, to admire that idealism, while in no way endorsing the violence that accompanied their efforts.
In a similar way, we should acknowledge it when people who are wealthy are willing to move beyond an ethic of greed. In other countries, particularly in the United States, there is a long tradition of philanthropy. We need more of it, not less. That is not to say that it is a replacement for state involvement, but it can complement it. All we are doing by being corrosively cynical about this effort to help sick children is ensuring that those who have wealth feel even more justified in retaining it for themselves.
It will be ironic indeed if the new Irish attitude to those who acquire wealth seems to be a mixture of deference and envy, while at the same time we assiduously reduce the chances that wealth will be used in creative rather than selfish ways.