We need to restore trust in our liberal democracy

For generations, the Irish people have trusted certain fundamental pillars of society. Respect for the Catholic Church, veneration of our political leaders, and deference to esteemed professionals and academics formed part of the bedrock of how we understood the world and our place in it. That security, that simple faith in respected voices to guide us trustworthily, has been severely tested in our modern era.

We are experiencing a profound erosion of public trust in our institutions and figureheads in politics, media, business, the gardaí, and the civil service. A haze of doubt and suspicion now clouds the once-hallowed reputations and unchallengeable motives of those we long took as obediently operating in the national interest.

The natural impulse of the average Irish citizen in times past was to accept the Ministerial statements, Garda press releases, expert reports, and news reports emanating from RTÉ and newspaper villages as gospel, an authoritative set of facts representing reality. We are increasingly abandoning such assumptions of fundamental decency, which motivate the governing levels of society.

Instead, we find ourselves beset by a growing conviction that an unaccountable caste of insiders across establishment ranks are deceiving us to secretly pursue their own interests at the expense of the general public. It has become depressingly routine to pick up the papers and find another instance of impropriety laid bare - from the Garda whistleblower saga to the Console charity's financial betrayals to the never-ending tally of excess costs associated with the still developing National Children's Hospital.

We have witnessed with our own eyes how the old certainties and cosy notions of honourable motives animating the governing classes have been exposed as complacent fictions papering over grubbier tendencies toward self-enrichment, opaque cronyism, and indifference to the public good.

As details of another ministerial expense report, mouth-watering in its excess and self-indulgence, leak into the press, can we continue believing these individuals have been staunch and impartial stewards of the nation's affairs? When the stench of institutional cover-up oozes from every new "legacy" scandal related to mother-and-baby homes, industrial schools, or Garda malpractice, is it really so unreasonable for the Irish people to question where else they have been misled and the truth buried?

Crucially, we have witnessed how the rapid dissemination of information through technology and new media has practically rendered it impossible for wrongdoing to remain hidden. In an age where anyone can become a citizen journalist, distributing footage or leaking documents to the world with a few taps, authorities no longer exert the same control over sensitive information flows.

The chastening revelations of Wikileaks and myriad other data dumps represent a fundamental restructuring of knowledge and evidence availability. Rather than truth residing solely in official statements and institutional records, we now accept the larger reality of documentation and data being perpetually "out there" with the potential to explode upturned narratives at any time.

The ramifications for government, state bodies, the media and business have been profound. We live in a new culture of radical transparency where it is no longer plausible for those in power to assume good faith among the public that they are dutifully upholding their offices and operating above board. The expectation is that everyone has angles, agendas and cover-ups to conceal.

For most objective observers in this increasingly jaundiced public environment, the notion that policy is diligently constructed to serve the greater national good or that the content of government and quango reports reflects a sincere pursuit of truth and accountability no longer carries inherent credibility.

Scandals like the Namagate controversy have hardened public perceptions that, regardless of official pretences, a self-preserving elite facilitates quiet quid pro quo arrangements to enrich themselves and connected interests at the public's expense. The national parliament and associated institutional infrastructure are seen less as functioning components of an open democracy than interlocking pieces of a Byzantine kleptocracy.

It would be overly cynical to state that this shadow of distrust has wholly obliterated the faith and respect the Irish people hold toward community leaders and local service providers like teachers, nurses, and Garda members closer to home. However, the aura of virtue and civic-mindedness still cloaking these professions locally cannot be projected upward to present-day national politics and public life.

Into this credibility vacuum has stepped a rising cohort of populists, rabble-rousers and internet conspiracy theorists rushing to provide pungent narratives to explain away the disheartening spectacle of official misconduct and collapse of accountability. Where once the sensible person looking for cogent political perspectives would turn to the analyses of newspaper columnists or academics, we increasingly find ourselves buffeted by online 'influencers' and 'citizen journalists' purporting to expose the absolute truth behind the establishment's lies and propaganda.

These self-appointed paragons of anti-establishment rhetoric and inflammatory accusations against the powerful may sometimes contain uncomfortable shreds of validity. However, their flagrant disregard for complexity, nuance, and proportionality when condemning entire classes of people and institutions as corrupt or malign actors is ultimately just as corrosive to public trust as the misdeeds they claim to be exposing.

Their populist bombast may initially resonate with an increasingly jaded public by channelling the legitimate frustration at being betrayed or misled so frequently by those notionally charged with upholding democracy and transparency. But the current wave of heated backlash, whether manifesting in online culture wars or real-world anti-immigration protests, shows troubling potential to burst beyond the boundaries of acceptable discourse into overt demagoguery and sectarianism if left unchecked.

We have already witnessed how the worst impulses of social media discourse seamlessly blend bad-faith arguments and unsubstantiated defamation aimed at any designated opponents of the self-appointed 'real Ireland' defenders' agenda. In a climate where trust in institutions and journalistic gatekeepers has evaporated, it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the tendentious from the rational or construct shared understandings of truth. The balaclava has made a sinister reappearance on the political peripheries.

So, we find ourselves on the cusp of a potentially ruinous fragmentation of consensus around empirically verifiable realities, with each tribe retreating into its own mistrustful ecosystem of self-vindicating information and righteously dismissing the other's claims of objectivity as tainted by corruption and bias.

Yet beyond the claustrophobic clamour of social media pile-ons and partisan axe-grinding, glimmers of an alternative still present themselves to the patient, cool-headed observer willing to push past the fatalistic rhetoric. Honourable individuals who have maintained integrity in public service despite great temptations remain worthy of respect. Rigorous journalists and academics committed to upholding high evidentiary standards provide shards of illumination. However obscured and spoiled, the ideal of governance in service of the public good still flickers. It may be a step of faith too far for the more radically disenchanted, but Taoiseach Simon Harris might yet embody that elusive political integrity. Ever hopeful, I am willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt; I hope I'm proven prescient in my assessment.

Perhaps most promisingly, the same transparency technologies fueling so much disillusion may ultimately chart a path toward restoring trust by decisively documenting misdeeds while enforcing accountability through radical information flows. Faith could be renewed if our institutions find ways to authentically operationalise principles of openness and establish decisively that they represent the popular will rather than private interests.

Cultivating such a renaissance of civic faith will take more work - belief is a fragile commodity, easily destabilised yet enormously challenging to reconstruct once shattered. But the alternative of succumbing to howling relativism and societal fracture ensures a grim trajectory. Restoring trust in liberal democracy remains both an imperative and a monumental test of our Irish democratic character.