Society is shaped by the individuals within it and so it follows that any deficiencies or inequalities are entirely of our own making, argues James Wrynn
After five years of tribunals, special inquiries and investigation of behaviour among groups as diverse as bankers, gardaí, tax evaders and religious, we are inured to the excuse that the perpetrators were trapped in a "culture" which shaped both their actions and the inadequate responses of others.
A recurring theme in the self-justification of those exposed is that they were caught up in a culture and are thereby less culpable for their actions and perhaps, even in some way, victims of circumstance.
"Culture" has been frequently invoked by people under cross-examination who have exhausted all acceptable possibilities for their behaviour. "It was what everyone was doing." "It was the done thing then." "The world and their mother were at it."
It is also an explanation invoked by organisations in defence of long-standing behaviours which were, in effect, institutionally sanctioned or tacitly tolerated to the point where they were indistinguishable from institutional policy. Take your pick from a long line of miscreants including errant bankers, deficient accountants, venal politicians and builders and sexual predators.
All of this implies that culture is something that arrives inexplicably in our society, like an outbreak of Asian flu or particularly unseasonable Irish weather, something over which we have no control.
But this is not the case. Culture in the broad sense of modes of behaviour, acceptable practices, the conventions of a society, is something moulded by society itself. Indeed, most thoughtful societies very actively seek to shape their culture.
Scandinavians try to create a society where co-operation and equality and integrity are pervasive features. The French assiduously seek to preserve and develop a very distinct and - perhaps - chauvinistic French society. The US promotes individualism and competition within a framework of conformity. None of these simplifications comprehensively describes each culture but they serve to point up the reality that societies actively shape culture.
This shaping of culture is done through education, through legislation, through the practical effect of every policy instrument selected (and indeed not selected) through the behaviour of politicians, and leaders in the society and its institutions. In short, through all the ways in which a society chooses to organise itself.
Of course, a society is shaped in its thinking by its cultural inheritance. But all societies critically examine that inheritance and decide to reinforce or change certain aspects of its culture and values.
Culture is sometimes shifted by significant initiatives at government level but more often through an amalgam of small changes, often apparently unconnected, but nevertheless part of a common weave of values and beliefs.
When we reflect on the 1980s, or indeed the 1950s, the reality is that there was active debate about key issues and aspects of our culture but a particular point of view fairly consistently won through, sanctioned by powerful forces in society.
It is a travesty to say that a critique of the chosen pathway was not articulated at that very time and that other options were not clearly available to those now exposed. There were voices raised.
George Colley's denunciation of "low standards in high places", almost 40 years ago marked a challenge to a shift in the culture of the dominant political party. David Andrews and Des O'Malley in Fianna Fáil were denied office or expelled for challenging the cultural shift in their own party. Joan Burton of the Labour Party was hounded and legally threatened in an attempt to silence her exposure of corrupt planning practices in Dublin County Council in the early 1990s, and Charlie Bird almost lost his livelihood and reputation when RTÉ was sued for its NIB exposure (an exposé rubbished by Charlie McCreevy).
Leaders of financial institutions methodically and meticulously planned tax evasion. Church leaders, with all the powers at their disposal, suppressed over many decades attempts to expose unacceptable aspects of church culture and denied redress to abused persons.
In all of these cases culture was either consciously shifted in an undesirable direction or unacceptable cultural practice was consciously reaffirmed.
And all of this, of course, refers to the Ireland of the 1980s and earlier, not the reformed contemporary modern, self-aware state. Naturally enough "we have moved on" and this sort of thing will not be happening again.
But in the year 2025 will we again invoke "the culture of the time" to absolve ourselves of responsibility for some of our current dreadful ways?
When a future enlightened commission examines the desolation of our physical environment by inappropriate urban and rural development, will those responsible say, "That's the way things were done then"?
Our environmental planning is the way it is because that is what decision-makers and powerful vested interests are deciding and those who oppose it are derided and mocked.
When a future commission looks at the damaged and unfulfilled lives of the 20 per cent of each age cohort who had not stayed in school long enough to get a Leaving Certificate in the first decade of this millennium, they will note that we structurally embraced a social and economic inequality which produced those shattered lives. As the recent UN report points out, we are the most unequal society next to the US in the developed world. We have manifestly achieved the "Boston" model, so vigorously and explicitly advocated by our Government.
Ireland is the way it is because of the choices we have consciously made. Its merits and demerits in the past or now are not the result of "cultural flu". We, individuals, politicians, business and institutional leaders stand accountable for the state of our society and the future we are shaping for our children. When there is a future accounting, will we invoke the plea of tribunal participants - the culture of the time - rather than the premeditation of our actions?
James Wrynn is chairman of the Labour Party's organisation committee