No-one should be surprised with Mahon Tribunal

The final report from the Mahon Tribunal has been published.

Why should anyone be surprised with the findings?

It's part of the human condition that people who are in positions of power, authority and influence will manage to live different lives to the rest of us mortals.

Who will stand up to someone in authority? Very few and those who do will be considered disloyal, rude, not willing to appreciate or understand.

It's the way societies and organisations work. One way of explaining it might be the 'bubble effect'. People move into jobs, surround themselves with sycophants and plough on.

Indeed, it must be seldom that top quality people with integrity and vision and a prophetic style influence societies and organisations.

And especially in what we call democracies, people of banal mediocrity, fill positions of leadership.

It's few people who want visionaries in control. That sort of person is called a 'maverick'.

Poor Bertie and Pee Flynn lived in bubbles. We the people put them there and cherished having them there. And it is/was we the people who turned them into gombeen men. Just what we have done with bishops and all superiors.

One might argue that there is a 'sleveen' 'cute hoor' factor within both the Irish church and Irish socitey that makes us especially prone to the 'bubble effect'.