The Dutch have a great word for it: plaatsvervangende schaamte. Hard to translate, but roughly it means the shame you feel on behalf of others. More painful, perhaps, than personal shame even, especially when you feel it for an entire country; it is an emotion which has become all too familiar to many people in Ireland in recent weeks.
But it was a couple of months ago that I felt it for the first time to such a severe degree. I was in Paris with a member of my family who urgently needed medical treatment, but was on a two-year waiting list in an Irish hospital. Availing of the little publicised but useful Cross-Border Healthcare Directive we went to visit an eminent French consultant. He was shocked, and as he arranged for treatment to begin immediately, he said to me: “I thought Ireland was a European country.”
I explained to him that it was a great Irish tradition to export our problems: we exported our excess population, we continue to export our unwanted children for abortion abroad, and now we are exporting our waiting lists for healthcare. I felt a deep, burning shame for my country.
When shortly afterwards I spoke about this shame to an Irish Government official, he told me about the shame he felt in doing his job, which was to defend our corporate tax rate to our European partners. "When all other arguments have failed, I tell them it's because of the Famine," he said, half-jokingly. But at least he had the decency to feel shame at what he was doing. And the feelings of shame may be the beginning of a positive development.
Neverending careers
The problem is, Ireland currently suffers from a lack of shame. Our present Taoiseach is a good example. He led his government into the election, and was firmly rejected by the voters. Did he resign as Taoiseach or even as leader of his party? His shameless behaviour is in sorry contrast to that of David Cameron who after leading his party to a sweeping victory in the general election, immediately resigned as leader because of the Brexit vote. Why do Irish politicians have to be dragged screaming from their Dáil offices and State cars? Why do we not value shame in our politicians and what does that tell us about ourselves?
The lack of shame permeates Irish society like a cancer, and nowhere more so than in the health service. Senior managers tacitly acknowledge their own failure while continuing to draw down large salaries. And what about the medical profession? The fact is, you will scour our prisons in vain for those brave, principled doctors who openly defied the law and endangered their careers in order to protect the lives of mothers.
A couple of years ago, when the young Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar died under shameful circumstances, I asked a young doctor of my acquaintance what kind of discussions on the subject were taking place among his colleagues. The answer was: none.
He told me how in his hospital, one of the best known in the country, he and his fellow junior doctors were relaxing in their staff room, when a discussion on abortion came on the radio. Rather than this sparking a discussion, they all studiously avoided each others’ eyes, in case they would betray their opinions to another doctor, who might be the wrong one. This is the kind of moral courage that has been instilled by our top schools into our brightest children. Luckily, he felt enough shame to resign and emigrate shortly afterwards.
What about the shame of the medical consultant who prescribes a course of treatment he knows is not going to happen in time to prevent long-term deterioration or ongoing discomfort and pain, and then points out that it can be done immediately in a private hospital? Some of them, I’m sure, have gone beyond shame, but others must feel it profoundly, and that can only contribute to the poisonous miasma which seems to hang over the HSE.
Dark memories
So why is shame such a taboo in Irish society? There are times when I think the Government official may be right. Perhaps our historical traumas have instilled in us such an overwhelming sense of shame that we are terrified of acknowledging it and dealing with it. Perhaps, in order to survive, we had to suppress any feelings of shame at losing our native language, followed by the trauma of enforced mass emigration, which continued in the State we created.
When the Minister for Finance, questioned on television about the Apple tax affairs, starts muttering about “eating the seed potatoes”, I think it’s clear we sorely need some kind of psychotherapy for the entire country, to get at the deep roots of our shame, our fear of poverty, fear of hunger. Surely after almost a century of statehood, we can acknowledge our shame. Surely we can say: I am deeply ashamed of our politicians, I am deeply ashamed of this society, I am deeply ashamed of this country. And most of all, I am deeply ashamed of myself for tolerating this situation.