The Tribunal season is back and it is natural to hope that the tribunals inquiring into things that were wrong in our country in recent decades will reveal the truth about what went on. The very proliferation of tribunals points to a belief we hold that the only way to arrive at truth is through exposure, and the more of it the better.
The fact is, however, that the law is about the law, not about the truth, and tribunals are not much different from the courts in that respect.
Tribunals can uncover certain truths. But the full truth, the truth that lies in the human heart, is never revealed by courts, judges, juries, barristers or tribunals.
The truth emerges only when we listen very carefully and honestly to our fellow human beings and let them disclose themselves.
The truth is not given through exposure but in moments of revelation, in tenderness - not in denunciation. Tribunals which, of their nature, demand what people wish to keep concealed can never reach the full truth. There is no doubt but that we do need a system of regulation that will not only bring control but will also ensure and promote accountability, good standards and honest practices.
These are essential elements of discourse in any democratic society and should apply similarly and equitably to both the public and private institutions and professions.
So though it may be tempting to hope that the tribunals will reveal to us the full truth about what has happened in our country, it is probably naive to expect that they will. Moreover, I am concerned that with all these tribunals and with the interest they generate among the public, a certain appetite for exposure is being cultivated and a certain mercilessness is entering our culture.
What is a more likely outcome of the tribunals than the revelation of the truth is that they will continue to be a source of satisfaction to those who enjoy seeing others being accused, denounced and exposed.
This is not to say that there should not be any tribunals. Tribunals are necessary, in fact the tribunal process is one of the few ways available to question rich and powerful interests, as well as institutions and professions.
Every effort must be made to ensure that the law is upheld, wrongdoers are brought to justice and victims are vindicated.
But we have only to look at the ordinary judicial system and the population in our prisons to see that the poor are disproportionately condemned by the legal system and that the wealthy rarely serve sentences. There is no reason to believe that this new model for examining wrongdoing will be any different.
The truth that will not be revealed through tribunals is a truth that we know already, though we do not often care to think about it. It is that through all those years when money was flowing out of the country into foreign banks, it was at the expense of the poor and the aged and the vulnerable in our society.
The extravagant spending, the rezoning of land belonging to the wealthy and the powerful, the illegal offshore investments and the passing over of brown-paper envelopes was happening while we were all being told to tighten our belts, unemployment was soaring to reach an all-time high of between a quarter of a million and 300,000, and 60,000 to 70,000 of our people were emigrating each year.
At the same time, the services that affected the poor most were either cut or stood still.
Charges to public patients were introduced and wards were closed in public hospitals, never to be reopened, still causing distress to many.
Embargoes on recruitment in all public bodies affected the health, education, housing, social welfare and social services.
Our house-building programme came to a grinding halt in the late 1980s. Dublin Corporation built 1,385 houses in 1985, but only 71 houses in 1991, a situation that created a problem which is now becoming even more acute as the current economic boom puts pressure on accommodation at all levels of society.
According to Government statistics, the number of households on waiting lists for public housing nationally has risen from 11,000 in 1989 to 39,179 in 1999 - a 400 per cent increase in 10 years. The voluntary sector estimates that well in excess of 40,000 households - which works out at about 120,000 people - are in need of housing, and the homeless population is growing daily.
The situation began to improve from the middle 1990s, but we have not recovered from the severe cuts of the 1980s, and during all this time land was being rezoned and bought and sold for gain and greed, not need.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the period under investigation in the tribunals, I like many others had people coming to them who were not able to put enough bread on the table to feed their children with what they were receiving in social welfare.
I remember people for whom we managed to secure housing eating whatever food they had off the floor, or off cardboard boxes, or sitting on their bed, because there was no money to provide them with a table or a chair. The situation is not quite as bad as that today, but between 10 and 12 per cent of our population still live in consistent poverty.
We have the second-highest child poverty rate in Europe and we continue to see a sickening gap between those who have too much and those who do not have enough, all a carryover from those times.
In the 1980s we were told that if we were prepared to wait, all would be well and that we would all benefit from the economic prosperity that would follow.
Economic prosperity has followed, but we have not all benefited, and meanwhile this false and pernicious theory absolved policy-makers from taking the responsibility to ensure that whatever wealth we had would be used for the good of all and would be equitably distributed.
While we are busy watching the spectacle of the tribunals, we are avoiding looking at more fundamental questions with regard to accountability and how the structures of our society operate. We do not see that the poverty, exclusion and marginalisation that we experienced in Ireland recently - and continue to experience - are a direct result of the model of development, complete with unjust structures and systems, that we all supported and support.
Ireland needs its tribunals. We need to make people accountable to the law.
But rather than glory in the frailties of others as revealed by the tribunals, let us try instead to ensure that the law is applied to the rich and poor alike. We need more than denunciations and accusations - we need to be more creative about thinking through the kind of Ireland we want.
We need a new commitment, not just from politicians but from all institutions of Church and State and from all of us, to a new Ireland that is just and equitable; a new Ireland that unlocks the energies and creative potential that is still locked away in our people; a new Ireland where we are not greedy and selfish at the core of our being as we appear to be now.
This must be the ethos of our society for the future, a society of right relationships with ourselves, with each other, within our communities and within our society. Is it not for this that our State was founded?
Sister Stanislaus Kennedy is a Sister of Charity