It’s amazing the number of people I speak to these days who have become disillusioned by incompetent institutions, both civic and religious.

Can we trust any institution now?

To begin with, after decades of scandals, we know many religious institutions act corruptly. Some clerics are more concerned with power than with service.

Congregations are sensible enough to walk away when the preachers of morality don’t practice what they preach.

Health institutions are even worse. Departments and their Trusts, by their very existence, should have the interests of patients as their first priority.

Instead, civil servants, accountants, consultants and administrators make health about them. Patients and frontline workers end up at the bottom of the pile.

Perfectly acceptable emergency facilities have been cynically run down to save money. For whom?

The chronically sick – who are least able to travel – are forced to find their own way across abominable roads and then wait for hours to be examined.

Patients and frontline workers are manipulated by fear; that is what institutions do to good people.

We’re more aware now because the biggest scandal of all was exposed by a drama on ITV, ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’.

The scandalous activity of the Post Office shocked us out of our hibernation.

We can no longer stand idly by. We get the services we deserve when we refuse to stand up for what is right and just.

When we placidly accept injustice, we enable that injustice.

Unethical behaviour in society needs to be called out. Ultimately, it is our fault if we accept injustice on a massive scale.

I am reminded of the famous quotation from Martin Niemöller about the growth of the Nazis. His principles apply to every generation:

“First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.

“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist.

“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew.

“Then they came for me – and there was nobody left to speak for me.”

There is nothing positive to say about the Post Office scandal.

The State-owned agency ruthlessly and callously persecuted a great number of its most respected people, devastating their lives and their reputations in the process.

The Post Office deliberately destroyed its most loyal servants as they lived in denial about a faulty computer programme.

How could they do such a thing for decades? Worse still, they prosecuted them through the courts and robbed their money.

The Post Office management made hundreds of sub-postmasters repay the money they claimed had gone missing from their branch office accounts. They prosecuted them for alleged theft.

They hounded them in public, and put them behind bars, even though they were innocent.

When they discovered it was a computer error, the Post Office went to extraordinary lengths to avoid accepting responsibility.

They hired enforcers and public relations experts to divert responsibility away from themselves – thereby compounding the evil they had already done.

They were shameless; they were ruthless.

They knew the allegedly missing money never left the system; it was there all the time. The money was never missing.

It gets worse. The large sums of money they stole from the innocent sub-postmasters helped swell the Post Office’s profits, and earned their top managers and Directors bonuses.

The former Chief Executive of the Post Office, Paula Vennells, was awarded the honour of Commander of the British Empire, a CBE, for her ‘success’ in managing the Post Office.

During her time as CEO of the Post Office, she was paid more than £4.5m.

Vennells trained as a Church of England (CoE) deacon, and was ordained a CoE priest in 2006. She served in three parishes while she was head of the Post Office.

Where was the honour in what the Post Office did? Where was the morality in what Vennells allowed to happen to the persecuted workers?

There was so much public anger after ITV’s drama series that Vennells handed back her CBE.

That could be said to be an honourable thing to do.

But where are the countless other Post Office personnel who were equally at fault for the greatest miscarriage of justice in recent times?

Will they be tried and prosecuted with the same enthusiasm the innocent postmasters were? If not, why not?

There’s another point. The prosecutions went through the British legal system. How could lawyers and judges have consistently got it so wrong and sent innocent, decent people to prison?

Will legal practitioners be held accountable? The courts destroyed not just the postmasters, but also their families and friends. How can they get their life back?

There is hope, though. If handled properly, this could be the turning point for public morality.

This is an opportunity when faith in public service and institutions can be redeemed.

Maybe Vennells will redeem herself and ensure the NHS will be run for the benefit of ordinary people. Maybe she will insist that Health Trusts do their duty.

She should insist they will work with integrity.

First, the Western Trust should restore emergency surgery to the South West Acute Hospital in Fermanagh.

They should show some respect to the people of this area, act with transparency and begin to provide the services this area needs and deserves. This is a matter of justice, too.

If we can find a positive outcome to what happened to Post Office workers, it is that the public instantly reacted angrily to this blatant injustice.

Could that mean that public morality is not yet dead? The public held the postmasters in high esteem and defended genuine community workers when the State’s power abused them.

The public honours genuine heroes.

Those who “do good when no one is looking” are the life and soul of our communities. Institutions which enslave people create an ugly, abhorrent atmosphere.

The Post Office scandal must be a turning point. The public will not be fooled again.