Fergus Finlay: There is no more putrefying smell than that of abused entitlement

It was hard to find pheasant, because it’s in the index under the French word faisan. Or faisanne, if you regard the female bird as superior, which apparently gastronomes do.

The bottom line was, it said to hang the birds before cleaning or plucking. So we did, in the damp cold scullery at the back of our little house. I didn’t know at the time that these birds had already been hung, and were ready to be plucked when they were given to us.

I will never forget the sensation, and the smell, when I put my hand inside the first bird several days later and began to remove the slimy innards. These unfortunate creatures were well beyond decomposition. They had completely rotted from the inside.

I have never been so overpowered by a smell. It was so foul that it was impossible to be in the same room — especially that little damp room. The business of gathering up the remains, wrapping them in newspapers and shoving them into a black sack to be taken to the dump took hours, because I had to stop for breath so often.

It aged me, that smell. To this day I have never been able to put a bit of pheasant — or any game bird stronger than a turkey — in my mouth without that memory reaching back through the years and grabbing me by the throat.

Privilege

In my head, that smell is one of abused entitlement. When I see instances of people taking their positions of privilege for granted, especially for greedy and selfish purposes, or to make themselves feel more important, I can’t help it. My gorge rises.

The same thing happens to me when I see people without any entitlement, except whatever the law or the constitution confers on them, being trampled on. But I’ll come back to that.

We should perhaps be getting used to the abuse of entitlement. 

We all got that smell when we saw bankers pocketing enormous salaries and bonuses while they made the reckless and sometimes corrupt decisions that broke our economy.

We got it while we watched some politicians enrich themselves while lecturing the rest of us about the need to tighten our belts. The Celtic tiger seemed to create an air of entitlement in all sorts of walks of life, and that atmosphere is still to be found and endured today.

We’ve had so many instances of abuse, especially of women and children, that have been uncovered in recent years. 

All those abuses carry a rotten horrible smell of their own.

But then you add in the sense of impunity with which a lot of it was carried out — and the certainty that abusers would never be caught or punished, hand in hand with the knowledge that there would always be others willing to cover up their crimes.

That’s when you realise that these people actually felt entitled to abuse others, for their own gratification or as their way of exerting power. There can surely be no more putrefying smell than that of entitlement.

So I was actually a little surprised at how nauseated I was by the smell of entitlement coming from a private hospital — the Beacon — and a private school — St Gerard’s — this past week.

By comparison with some of the things that have been uncovered in the past, it’s probably pretty petty, I suppose. But it still smelled like a rotted carcass. There was selfishness, greed, and self-aggrandisement about it.

A CEO threw his weight around to impress his friends. He ignored, if he didn’t abuse, the needs of people who live in fear from the pandemic, and who are genuinely entitled on public health grounds to a much higher priority than they got from him.

The ones who took the vaccine on offer were just as bad. They didn’t pay for those vaccines — we did. They just felt entitled to help themselves. It actually doesn’t get much more selfish and uncaring than that.

The fact that the school has refused to comment tells its own story.

Sometimes things don’t smell quite so bad when you’re in the open air. If you’re locked in an airless room, you can feel like you’re never going to recover if the smell is really awful.

I suspect that’s why we’re all so angry at what happened, and why the Beacon is the dominant topic of conversation now. Everyone in Ireland is hemmed in by the pandemic, and longing for our proper turn to come so that vaccination will make some normal life possible again. That’s why most of us are so nauseated by this carry-on.

The Taoiseach and other ministers have suggested that the board of the hospital should make the CEO accountable, but that seems like a complete pipedream given the 'review' they have now announced. According to the hospital’s website, there isn’t an independent director involved and each highly paid staff member's boss is the CEO. Not too much boat-rocking likely to happen there.

Lessons learned

The Beacon Hospital has established itself as an unreliable and unworthy partner for the State in any future healthcare development. I hope that that lesson, anyway, won’t be forgotten.

At the other end of the scale entirely, Prime Times Investigates revealed last week that some elements of our State routinely gather information, in secret and without permission, on children and their families. These are not families of criminals. They are children with autism and other disabilities, who have been let down by the State.

Because they have commenced legal proceedings, someone somewhere seems to think it’s appropriate to assemble dossiers of intimate and sensitive information on these children. The only possible reason for doing this is to have leverage against the children and their families — to get them to withdraw or settle their cases.

Right now, there are several investigations going on into how this has happened and for what reason and by whom, so it really isn’t possible to be clear. Every medical professional I know, for example, would regard it as outrageous if they were asked to hand over information like this without the permission of the family or without a court order.

But one thing we do know for sure. Children have rights under our constitution and the State has an obligation to vindicate those rights. That provision of the constitution was inserted precisely to protect children in more vulnerable situations. Behaviour like that described on Prime Time tramples all over the spirit, if not the letter, of the rights of children. And it too stinks to high heaven.