Saturday, April 04, 2009
THERE was a frightening photograph on the front page of the Irish Examiner on Thursday of a seemingly endless line of people queuing for food at 8.30 in the morning at the Capuchin Day Centre in Bow Street, Dublin.
There were more than 700 people in the queue. It was reminiscent of the photographs of the horrors of the Great Depression.
Many of those people may have been there through no fault of their own. Others might be responsible for their own plight, but they will probably blame somebody else anyway. Such people usually do.
One night a few years ago while looking at some books in a shop window, a man complained that I was in favour of refugees. It was wrong to prohibit refugees from working and to force them onto welfare, when they were anxious to work, I replied.
"What about Irish people who can’t get jobs?" he asked. "I haven’t had a job since 1964!"
He was much bigger and stronger, so like Slattery’s Mounted Foot, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and moved on.
Some days later I was in a bank and I noticed the same man at the information counter. Suddenly the everyone else went silent and stopped whatever they were doing as he shouted, "If I was a refugee, you would give me some service!"
When I was a youngster some of the local lads would sometime get together and go around to houses making a collection to buy a football. I never got involved, because I would be decidedly embarrassed when they came to my house.
My mother felt very strongly that able-bodied young lads should raise such money by doing something like the "bob a job," that was popular with the boy scouts. They could band together and cut grass or hedges or wash cars.
In the last 160 years probably a greater proportion of Irish people have gone abroad in search of economic security than any other people in the world. They worked for a living, and whatever they achieved was largely through their own initiative.
It would have been an outrage during the Celtic Tiger period, if we had refused to help others. It would be just as outrageous if people now turned on those honest foreigners who have settled in this country.
Most Irish people are probably compassionate, but we all resent being taken for suckers.
One newspaper recently showed a picture of man moving with apparent difficulty with a crutch.
He was in the midst of heavy traffic trying to collect money from cars. Later there was a photograph of the man walking normally. It was all a con job. His ilk gives charity a bad name. The real test of the Government’s budget next week will be whether they are prepared to provide proper leadership by cutting their own salaries, eliminating their tax-free perks in the form of untouched expenses, and doing away with the abuse of providing pensions to serving politicians and to former ministers who had not reached retirement age and are still working in other jobs.
At least one such former minister is currently drawing over €100,000 in Dáil and Ministerial pensions while earning more than twice as much in his regular job and serving on a number of boards. Should he just do the patriotic thing and surrender his pensions? Get real.
The Government should lead in this matter. If the politician just surrendered his pensions, the gougers in the Government would be laughing at him as a right sucker. Nobody likes being taken for a sucker.
Enda Kenny recently suggested that ministers and former ministers should not be drawing their pensions while still serving as politicians.
When he was asked to give up his pension, he quite fittingly refused, unless the Government is prepared to abolish the right. Some people may consider that hypocritical, but the real hypocrites are those who are failing to provide the leadership.
This is the responsibility of the government, not the opposition. If the government does not want that responsibility, it should go into opposition, or preferably, get out of politics. Some politicians have renounced entitlements that they thought were wrong.
Des O’Malley and Bobby Molloy surrendered their ministerial pensions following the formation of the Progressive Democrats in the 1980s.
It was a pity that they did not insist that any of the governments that they subsequently propped up should follow suit. They would have been in the strongest position of all to insist that the government follow their example.
In a joint statement in February Prionsias de Rossa of the Labour Party, Gay Mitchell of Fine Gael, and Eoin Ryan of Fianna Fáil announced that they were surrendering their ministerial and Dáil pension entitlements to help the economic recovery.
They issued to joint statement to show solidarity and avoid the appearance of upstaging one another.
That was leadership, but where is the leadership from our supposed leaders? "It is no less than a call to patriotic action," Finance Minister Brian Lenihan declared when he introduced his budget last year. Lenihan would do well to recall the dictum of Samuel Johnson, who proclaimed that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".
Next week’s budget will be Lenihan’s third attempt to tackle the economic malaise. The first two efforts were pathetic failures.
"Fool me once, shame on you," Eamon de Valera who used to say, "Fool me twice, shame on me." Lenihan must get it right this time. If we allow ourselves to be fooled a third time, we will deserve nothing but the highest contempt.
Of course, this is not just about politicians. The Gaelic Players Association (GPA) seemed to move to cuckooland this week. It announced that it may accept cuts to the government grants to players but would not tolerate the abolition of the grants scheme. Last year’s grants were roughly €1,500 to each player, totalling €3.5 million. People may not mind giving money to charity, but the GPA is not a charity.
"If the amount of money given to the players was withdrawn in the morning, I don’t think it would solve the issues of people on (hospital) trolleys or it would solve the other difficulties that are in the country," Deputy John O’Mahony of Fine Gael said.
Lenihan admitted the country’s fiscal position was "unsustainable" after the finances for the first quarter of the year showed a €3.7 billion shortfall. All unnecessary payments must be cut out.
The GPA claims it is just looking for parity of esteem with players in other sports. If the Government was paying soccer players, rugby players, jockeys, or golfers, that would be equally wrong. These sports have the means of raising their own money. They do not need charity, and they should not get charity.
"Now, more than ever players need this contribution to their welfare," the GPA contends. "The rate of job losses is rising alarmingly and players are compromised due to the time constraints involved with inter-county committee."
This is crazy. We do not need new breed of civil servants — professional Gaelic footballers and hurlers — any more than we should be paying soccer or rugby players. Those sports can fund themselves.
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