An Irishman's Diary

WHATEVER the outcome of Gerard McWilliams’s personal injury case against Eircom (court reports, yesterday), the Government should give him a job.

Even before the latest mishap, in which he allegedly twisted his ankle on a manhole cover, he had taken more than a dozen similar cases, involving everything from jogging accidents to food poisoning, to falling in a neighbour’s driveway. He must be, as a judge in a previous hearing said, “the luckiest or the unluckiest man” in Ireland.

Either way, he appears to have a talent for finding trouble, despite himself. Which is why I could foresee a useful role for him in, say, the Office of Public Works or Dublin City Council.

Equipped with the necessary safety gear – a suit of armour, minimum – he could patrol streets, parks, playgrounds, roadwork schemes and other potential hazards, identifying pitfalls before they claim innocent victims and lead to litigation. In fact, never mind the OPW, this could even be a stand-alone job, like the Ombudsman’s. The office of “Hitchfinder General” has a nice ring to it.

BUT WHETHERit was Mr McWilliams or anyone else, the Hitchfinder General would be busy enough without having to worry about the national rail network. And in any case, Iarnród Éireann's report into the collapse of the Malahide Viaduct suggests the need for another new job, both at Government level and in all large organisations: ie "Keeper of the Corporate Memory".

Irish Rail cited the loss of such memory as a big factor in the near disaster. Specifically, in the decades since reinforcement work was carried out on the causeway under the viaduct, it had been forgotten that the railway was sitting on this manmade structure and not sunk in the bedrock below.

Subsequent maintenance thus concentrated on the viaduct rather than the causeway; even as erosion did its worst.

Corporate amnesia is a problem in all organisations: especially when, as happens evermore frequently, the most experienced people are encouraged to take early retirement. In such circumstances, trying to retain and collate all the accumulated knowledge of a company’s employees would be a big challenge.

But I suppose a Keeper of the Corporate Memory might be responsible for debriefing staff prior to retirement, asking them to list the most important things learned during their careers, and then displaying this information strategically around the office.

Also useful would be a 24-hour hot-line to which former staff could phone in random thoughts, like the ones that occur with sudden clarity in the middle of the night, eg: “By the way, that causeway at Malahide is built on sand. You probably know this already, but I just thought I should mention it”.

THE DANGEROUSdepletion of Iarnród Éireann's memory bank deposits and the resultant derailing is a near-perfect metaphor for what has happened to the Irish economy. Well, apart from the fact that, in the case of the railway, disaster was avoided.

Oh – and the fact that the damage there was fixed within three months.

I was thinking more of the role collective amnesia also played in Ireland’s crash, as it does in market crashes everywhere. At least the lost memories in Irish Rail’s case dated back to 1967 – “the Summer of Love” – so whatever other distractions might have been involved, there was also the excuse of half a lifetime passing since.

But explaining the tendency of economic mistakes to repeat themselves, the economist JK Galbraith once estimated corporate memory in financial circles to be about 10 years.

In The Great Crash 1929 , which he wrote in 1954, he was marginally more generous: “The memory of that autumn, although now much dimmed, is not yet gone,” he wrote. “In every considerable community there are yet a few survivors, aged but still chastened, who are still muttering [‘Never again’] and still shaking their heads. The [1920s] had no such guardians of sound pessimism.” That last sentence suggests yet another new post that might be created in large companies, and at national level too. The Chief State Pessimist, as the government officer might be called, would be responsible for pouring cold water on all good news, and might issue an annual report every January 1st, explaining why this year, for sure, we are all doomed.

He/she would be particularly useful during those latter stages of a boom when others have resorted to what Galbraith called “preventive incantation”: ie, repeating messages like “this time it’s different” and “the fundamentals are sound”.

Statutorily obliged to see the worst of everything, the CSP could not be accused of lacking patriotism in talking down the economy.

IF THEREis a good side to the current crisis, I suppose, it is that corporate memory loss may in future be less of a problem than before. Soon, the way things are going, we'll all have to work until we're 90. And yet maybe even this will be of no help to organisations trying to avoid repeat mistakes.

After all, the Latin root of “corporate” means “body”. And of the many weaknesses to which human bodies are prey, progressive memory loss is one of the most inevitable.

This may help explain the misfortune of the aforementioned Mr McWilliams. At any rate, asked if he could be remember the 13 or 14 previous personal injury actions he had been involved in, the best the poor man could manage was “10 or 11”.

fmcnally@irishtimes.com