Can any good come out of the continuing shattering of our faith in institutions?

Yes.

The Church, the political establishment and the financial institutions have all let us down -- but as one once-trusted organisation after another has its weaknesses mercilessly revealed, we are left with no option but to grow up and learn to stand on our own two feet.

We have lived in an independent State for the best part of a hundred years. Yet, as citizens of an independent State, we trusted the religious orders to take inconvenient children off our hands -- children who were poor, or who had nowhere to go or who were a little troublesome.

We trusted the Catholic Church to tell us what to do in areas of public policy -- especially health policy -- as well as private morality.

We trusted banks and building societies to keep the economy ticking over, to be prudent, to make it all right to give us stupid amounts of credit.

We trusted politicians to cater to our whims and needs. We trusted the property developers to keep the good times going in the face of all warnings to the contrary. Independent, my eye.

Betrayals

Isn't it extraordinary that an earlier generation fought and won a war of independence and that the Irish people then covered themselves in a cloak of conformity, smugness and blind faith for decades afterwards?

What are we going to do about this and about the betrayals that followed?

Anger is justified but a point will come, and soon, when we have to move on from anger. Criminal proceedings and further inquiries may well be needed too, but something more than that is necessary also.

We need to learn and apply a broader lesson. The lesson is this: somehow, as a people we have to develop a more independent frame of mind, a more feisty approach to life, a willingness to take responsibility for ourselves. We need a healthily sceptical attitude towards institutions.

The media is a case in point. I don't believe anybody can point to a major betrayal by the media of the people. But the people have always taken that healthily sceptical attitude towards the media.

They recognise the importance of the media and of the role of a free press but they don't fool themselves that we are all a bunch of saints.

In other words, the media has never been the beneficiary of blind faith from readers, viewers and listeners and we are all the better for it.

Traumatised

Suppose we had taken that attitude towards the Church, the religious orders, the banks, the property developers and the political establishment in general? Would we have a better country today? Would we have a stronger economy? Would we have fewer traumatised people? I think we would.

Readers might object, by the way, that we have always been sceptical of politicians. I disagree. I think we put on a show of scepticism -- but we swallow their promises and we are forever beseeching them to do this, that and the other for us. We queue up at their clinics to ask them to write letters for us, to fill in forms, to put in a word. Check out Ardal O'Hanlon's new vehicle, Val Falvey TD, on RTE and you'll see what I mean.

Stripped

We can no longer huddle under the cloak of Mother Church or of the other "mothers" -- the banks and so on -- that have let us down. We have to emerge and to take responsibility for ourselves.

I don't know what form a new willingness to stand up on our own two feet will take. But we have learned, I hope, that the option of expecting someone to come and take care of us is simply not going to work. The supports have been stripped away. We are on our own.

It's time to get up off our knees.

- Padraid O'Morain