Lieut-Col Gerald Swan, Force Mobile Reserve, UNIFIL, Lebanon, last month replied in this newspaper to a column I had written about the deafness claims which threaten to reduce this State to the economic condition of Albania. He was critical of both my opinion of many of the soldiers who have gone to litigation and of the behaviour of the courts involved. He then described his own hearing loss.
"I have served for 36 years in the Army and have recently sought damages for hearing loss. I am not totally deaf and continue in service. I cannot, however, engage in group conversation and have difficulty in even one-to-one conversation. Because of the strain involved, I am forced to reduce my social intercourse to a minimum. I cannot enjoy a night out at the cinema or theatre and have difficulty communicating at work at home with my family. I suffer a continuous ringing in my head."
Group conversation
If Lieut-Col Swan is telling the truth - and I personally believe him - he is suffering a great deal, and he has my every sympathy. As he says himself, he cannot engage in group conversation and has difficulty in conversing with individuals. Public places, in which individuals address audiences, became places to avoid.
So what is he doing serving in one of the world's most enduringly violent areas? Presumably, as a lieutenant-colonel - and with the Mobile Force Reserve, no less - his duties are not clerical. He is not tucked away in some cubby-hole in McKee barracks, dealing with paperwork. He is on active service, in a region where quick decisions need to be made and communications must be both swift and clear - and this man has hearing difficulties which, in his own words, make group conversations and group briefings impossible and even one-to-one conversations difficult?
What is going on that such a person suffering from such disabilities is given such a position of huge responsibility in the most complex and violent area of operations the Army is involved in? I am glad for Lieut-Col Swan's sake that, shortly after he wrote his letter, he was awarded £30,000 against the State for the hearing loss, though I do not understand how this alters his hearing problems. Nor do I understand how he has been able to hold down a position of such considerable responsibility, with so many lives presumably dependent on his ability to hear verbal reports and to act on them instantly, with such aural infirmity.
Perhaps Lieut-Col Swan has been using a hearing aid. If so, he is unusual: how many of the poor, deaf creatures shuffling to the steps of the court manage to get by without hearing aids? How many of those soldiers who have been awarded the average sum of between £20,000 and £30,000 went out and bought top-of-the-range hearing aids with the money they got from us?
Penalty clause
Not many, we can be sure. Four-wheel drives, yes; hearing aids, no - possibly on the grounds that a Range Rover might not aid your hearing, but it certainly makes you feel a damn sight better. And who would not go for the option of a free 4x4, courtesy of the State, if they could? Myself, I might be tempted, especially if I thought there would be no penalty attached.
But now, with the Fenlon case, it seems that there is a penalty clause for the unsuccessful. Actually, I feel rather sorry for Brian Fenlon, the 51year-old former FCA member who sued for hearing loss incurred some 30 years ago and whose petition Mr Justice Kelly found "rather opportunistic". He will now have to pay the State's costs of £15,000. He is hardly to be blamed for doing what others have been doing, with the State invariably settling on the steps of the court.
That has been the fatal pusillanimity which has bloodied the waters and caused the compensation feeding-frenzy, aided and abetted, of course, by the legal profession. The least the poor taxpayers of Ireland were entitled to expect in these circumstances was to be spared the recent sermonising from the Incorporated Law Society, which laid the blame for this farce on decades of neglect by the Army and the Department of Defence.
Ah. That simple, is it? Greedy lawyers are not to blame, but negligent State agencies are. Good. Every now and then we can rely on the the Incorporated Law Society to treat us to a little bit of homely preaching, as if it were representing a band of unpaid Third World eye surgeons who save the sight of little black babies otherwise doomed to blindness.
Of course, the Incorporated Law Society is particularly well placed to adumbrate upon the deafening effects of gunfire. The people it represents are legal mercenaries, hired guns whose duty, provided it is not breaking the law, is to the clients who employ them. Money is the engine of law; otherwise recourse to it would not be so ferociously expensive. Having to endure sermons from the professional body representing lawyers is a bit much - for cupidity garbed in sanctimoniousness gets no farther south than the oesophagus.
Working for money
Most lawyers work for money; and so do I. But this is about more than plain money. It is about a Golconda of wealth; and the Incorporated Law Society's blanket acquittal of its members of the sin of greed suggests it would be an interesting sentry at the gates of heaven. I trust it is as myopic about other sins too when my soul flutters up for inspection.
But there is more to this than money. It is about responsibility too. And for the Incorporated Law Society to decide here and now that the Army and the Department of Defence are responsible for the truly astounding losses to the State is a curiously pre-judicial statement from a society representing professional lawyers about cases hearing or cases pending, in which its members will be representing the very State agencies which the ILS has, pre-trial, declared guilty.
Who cares? The State - you, me - if found guilty by the courts, will pay the hefty fees of all the ILS members; and that's the bit that really counts.