Citizens and parties no longer tolerate the low standards that nearly ruined Ireland
WHY WAS it only in recent decades that deficiencies in our civic morality and responsibility became fatal to the integrity of Irish political and eventually business life?
I believe that the answer to this lies in the way in which during the half-century after independence we were protected from the consequences of the substantial absence of a civic morality at the popular level, by the integrity of our two sets of national revolutionaries, who challenged each other for power through the democratic system.
After independence, some of these revolutionary leaders served in government over a period of 43 years – one, indeed, for 47 years. They disagreed vigorously with each other about many things, but were committed to personal integrity in public life and to resisting negative popular pressures on this issue.
It is true that from the 1930s onwards our politicians succumbed to the temptation to make political appointments within the very narrow range of areas in respect of which the first government had not applied the new meritocratic and politically neutral appointments system that it had introduced between 1922 and 1926 in respect of the Civil Service and local government.
This small, heterogeneous group of jobs open to such intervention comprised manual workers’ foremen, rate collectors, and the judiciary, as well as two new posts – vocational teachers and directors of State companies – which had not existed when that meritocratic system had been instituted.
Nevertheless, between them, these two first governments got rid of serious financial corruption in local government, which at the local level had sometimes included the payment of bribes for jobs, and they also guarded against the emergence of corruption at the national level.
Moreover, ministers of both parties lived on their salary of £1,700, (€110,000 in today’s money) – subsequently reduced by de Valera to £1,000 a year (€65,000 in today’s money) – with no expense allowances.
The high standards of our administrative system were illustrated early on by the fact that when the first government emerged from the siege of Government Buildings in the early days of the Civil War, the secretary of the Department of Finance presented them with bills for the food bought to sustain them during that siege.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the surviving former Fianna Fáil ministers were horrified at the prospect of the emergence of a different kind of Fianna Fáil. It was only with extreme difficulty that Frank Aiken, due to his concern for the party and the country, was persuaded to stand again for election for Fianna Fáil in 1973. Later, de Valera confided his deep fears for the party and the country to a minister in whose integrity he had confidence. And, when in the mid-1980s Seán MacEntee was dying, he asked to see me, in part so as to confide his deep concern for the future of the State because of what was happening within his party, Fianna Fáil.
Unhappily, because of the widespread lack of a tradition of civic responsibility or sense of civic morality – for which I fear the Catholic Church must bear some of the blame – the disappearance of the last of the revolutionary generation from government in the 1960s removed what turned out to have been the only barrier to the spread of a socially defective value system at the hitherto notably honest area of our national politics.
There can be little doubt that a decline in standards, not just in politics but also in business, in banking, and in parts of the public service, has been largely responsible for the recent collapse of our financial system and of our economy.
That collapse could not have occurred on such a dramatic scale during the first half of our State’s existence. Certainly many mistakes were made by governments during that period, but because our political system then upheld high standards, it simply did not permit the kind of events that have since led to the simultaneous collapse of so many aspects of our social and economic system.
However, the disaster we are experiencing may now have belatedly started to remoralise our society – if we are to judge by the recent Irish Times poll showing the belated emergence of huge public concern for personal integrity, a virtue, that in recent decades had become grossly undervalued by our electorate.
This change of heart by the public has also emerged from the audience at a recent Frontline programme on RTÉ television.
While there are many ways in which our national political system can – and should – be criticised as having contributed to a lowering of the standards during the first half-century of Irish independence, it should, in fairness be added that the number of national politicians who engaged in personal corruption for their own financial benefit has in fact been very small – few enough to be counted on the fingers of two hands.
Nevertheless, the impact of this upon the ethical atmosphere of politics became quite powerful. Moreover this drop in ethical standards was for many years tolerated by public opinion – being seen as acceptable, or alternatively becoming the subject of a dishonest form of denial on the part of the electorate, who clearly preferred not have these ethical failures drawn to their attention.
We all know the consequences of this widespread deterioration in the ethical standards of business as well as politics, which has come very close to destroying the financial viability of our State. The question now is whether we can recover the moral ground that has been so damagingly lost over the last 50 years? Can the public anger, of which there have been so many signs in recent months, be harnessed constructively to bring about a genuine ethical revolution in Irish society and thus in Irish politics?
That is the question which we must now ask ourselves. There are certainly more hopeful signs within the political system, for both of the parties in the new Government, as well as the new Fianna Fáil Opposition are strongly committed to new political reforms designed to prevent these kinds of abuses occurring in the future.