I recently listened to Olivia O’Leary and couldn’t help feeling despaired. I have a lot of time for journalists and believe that without journalists, we would still be sitting in the trees. Olivia however, has been a thorn in my ear for quite a while. She never misses an opportunity to run down Irish society. This is of course her right, after all, we do have freedom of speech. Yesterday for example, she picked up on the case of Grace who had been in state care for many years and throughout this time, been abused by members of her foster family. Olivia stated that she was embarrassed to be Irish and that it was another sign of a weak state for those things to happen.
The reason I’m writing this post, is because I would like to challenge Olivia on this. I believe the exact opposite. I believe we should be thankful to be living in a state like Ireland. A country that lives up to all the challenges thrown at it. Over the last 15 or so years, Ireland had to deal with a fair share of scandals. Abuse through clerics, banking fraud, horse meat scandal…, the list goes on. However, instead of being embarrassed, I think we should hold our heads up high and point out that the people in office don’t try to avert the media to make those facts public, but face facts and try to clean up the mess. The Irish authorities do not claim that they’re victim of fake news. They do not uninvite members of the media, due to “unfair” or better unwelcome coverage of news. The Irish people and their representatives have the guts to stand up and face the music. That’s what I call class.
No society is perfect and to pretend to be or even to aim to be is dangerous. It would probably be easier for some to sweep anything untoward under the next available carpet, only to look good in public. The more difficult way to deal with things is to get on with cleaning up whatever needs to be cleaned up and show the rest of the world that we’re not afraid of the truth.
