Some weeks ago I wrote a column about the death of a young father, James Phelan, who was killed in a car-crash near Limerick in 1997. James did not die in an accident, for there was a sublime sense of purpose about the behaviour of the young man who killed him, Stephen Power, who had in the year before repeatedly appeared in court on speeding charges, and who had been repeatedly allowed to retain his licence.
Three days after he finally lost his licence, and uninsured and driving over the speed limit, he lost control of his car and drove into James Phelan. For this offence, this fine young fellow was finally banned from driving - but only until he is 46 - and fined £2,000. He was not imprisoned. No order was made to cover either the costs of the crash or the upkeep of James Phelan's widow or his two children. We, you and I, will maintain the young Phelan family, through our taxes and our car insurance premiums.
No response
How is this so? Because, at a certain level, we want it to be so. We do not respond to the disgusting toll of death on our roads. Our church leaders do not rail against it. Politicians, by and large stay silent. There is no outcry when the likes of Stephen Power, killer, gets away with something uncommonly close to murder.
I had, vainly, naively, stupidly, hoped that my outlining the details of the perfectly needless death of James Phelan, might trigger some response. It triggered none, none whatever. That might well be because nobody ever reads this column and this newspaper is wasting its money employing me. But even if that were the case, and it probably is, somebody, somewhere, in an idle moment in a waiting room or on a bus, must surely have cast their eyes over the details printed here; yet nobody seemed angered by this needless death and this needless grief.
Presumably, therefore, we are this way because we want it. We are content that 400 families a year must pass through the valley of tears the Phelans are travelling, merely in order that we may drive fast, badly and dangerously. Our courts do too little, and our politicians do even less.
EU figures suggest we have the third most dangerous roads in Europe, measured by head of population. But I would be confident we have the greatest number of deaths per drivermiles driven in Europe, and not a peep is heard. Not a whisper. This is the silent, unwritten, unspoken undeclared contract that together we have entered. In understanding and in death it binds the people of Ireland together.
Depraved political culture
It was a similar contract, born of cowed or cowardly political will, and the failure of middleclass conscience to unite and point to something which was obvious as the nose on the end of our faces, that has brought us to the abysmal nadir of payments-to-politicians, of tribunal following tribunal, and even Team Aer Lingus. One man set the standards which brought us to this pretty pass, and we must now foot the bill, just as we must foot the bill for the Phelan family.
Only a bizarre and depraved political culture could have tolerated the Talbot II deal that was done with Aer Lingus employees - that they would be guaranteed work for life if they joined that grotesque but not untypical state-subsidised folly called Team Aer Lingus. Only a bizarre and depraved political culture could have permitted cash-contributions to politicians to become, it seems, almost a norm, or allowed the security forces to tap the phones of journalists, or suspended the rule of law in Roscommon, or have tolerated the scandalous relationship between the state and a single group of beef companies, or have permitted the succession of extraordinary deals, such as Carysfort, Telecom, Greencore, in which the taxpayer was invariably the loser.
The man from whom that culture emanated was Charles J. Haughey, and only one journalist, Conor Cruise O'Brien, repeatedly and consistently warned us of the long-term consequences of the Haughey years. The little things should have warned us all; such as the much vaunted tax-free status of writers, which relieves all of them, even the richest, of their responsibility to the state and transfers it to the rest of us. And those "free" toothbrushes to the nation's children: not free at all, but a gimmick paid for out of that bottomless larder, the public purse.
Our own legacy
As are the consequences of the Haughey years, in tribunal after tribunal after tribunal, till our heads are dizzy with the rollcall of judges sidelined from other work so that they might unravel the Haughey legacy. But listen, we may call it that, though is not Haughey's legacy really: it is ours. We voted for him, as did the Fianna Fail underlings now in power and quaking.
Similarly with the butchery on the roads. It is what we want. In that curious way that political will is an expression of group psyche, we prefer people to die than that we should forfeit our rights to be reckless on the roads. So it might be said that Stephen Power did not kill James Phelan. By the easiest and the most deadly sin of all, that of omission, the Irish people did. And do. And will do, until the wails of grief shame us into stopping the slaughter.