The secret to success is . . . I forget

There were angry exchanges at the rail signalling inquiry during the week when, not for the first time, one of the investigators criticised the quality of a witness's recall. Questioning former Esat director Leslie Buckley, Fianna Fail TD Noel O'Flynn noted that he had studied the evidence from the day before and counted 11 separate occasions when Buckley answered "I don't know" or "I can't remember".

This seemed to me a little harsh, a view shared by Buckley. For one thing, O'Flynn's party has contributed generously to the line-up of witnesses at the various inquiries, and their performances have rarely suggested familiarity with any of Edward de Bono's memory-training techniques. More to the point, 11 "don't knows" or "can't remembers" is well below the tribunal record. (The provisional best single-day figure is held by George Redmond, although the authorities are still trying to establish if his performance was wind-assisted).

Buckley was in high dudgeon, or certainly medium dudgeon, at the suggestion that he had been less than forthcoming. If he didn't know the answer to a question, he was dang-well going to say he didn't know, he said, explaining: "If you say anything incorrect here, it may be used against you". Fair enough. But the incident highlighted again what I believe will prove to be one of the great achievements of the tribunals: to make ordinary members of the public feel better about their own mental capacities. My point is that the witnesses appearing before the various inquiries include some of the most high-powered, successful people in the country. Yet the incidence of memory lapse, faulty recall and generally poor grasp of detail among them has been such as to suggest that, due to dietary or other reasons, this is a particularly high-risk group.

And while the human reaction is to sympathise with them at the loss of what, in many cases, must have been such happy memories, the phenomenon can only reassure the rest of us about our limited powers of retention. Certainly, when you see the difficulties top people have, you can't feel quite so bad about forgetting your PIN number or leaving the kids behind at the supermarket. I think this reassurance factor also explains the numbers of elderly people who fill the galleries at Dublin Castle, even on boring days.

Memory tends to disimprove over the years, of course. Mine used to be pretty sharp, which is one of the reasons I got an A in Leaving Cert history (or possibly a D - it's a long time ago now).

But I just wish the tribunals had been sitting when I was in school. There was a terrible lack of public validation for the "don't know" option at that time. And confronted with exam questions, the system encouraged us to bluff, even when we knew that, if we said anything incorrect, the markers would probably use it against us.

It seemed unfair that the Leaving Cert quizzed you about classroom events that happened up to two years earlier - a very long time in a teenager's life. You might have suppressed all memory of Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example, but if the exam paper asked you to comment on his use of alliteration, you had to try. There was nothing to be gained by a more honest answer, such as: "I have no specific recollection of meeting any Mr Hopkins during the period in question. If you have evidence that he was part of the curriculum, I can only accept such a meeting must have taken place. As to whether he used alliteration, I honestly can't say. We were dealing with poets on an almost daily basis at the time. Some used alliteration, some didn't - it was nothing unusual. I remember Emily Dickinson because of her eccentric punctuation. But Hopkins - what was his first name? Gerard? No, it doesn't ring a bell."

The essentially adversarial nature of the exam system made it a poor preparation for life. And the numbers of people with bad memories who have reached the top in politics and business shows how overrated a grasp of facts was. True, certain witnesses have shown vastly improved recall after receiving formal warnings from the inquiry chairmen. But if I'd been given the opportunity to reflect overnight on my answers, I'd have done a much better Leaving Cert.

Anyway, the increased public understanding of the problem can only be welcomed. Recent opinion polls have highlighted the growing confidence of the "don't knows," who are now expected to decide the next general election. They were a clear majority of the electorate during the Nice referendum, before getting squeezed by the Government's brutal Yes-or-No approach. If such discrimination continues, it's only a matter of time before someone starts a party.

fmcnally@irish-times.ie