Taoiseach quoting Dr Evil? We should worry

“DON’T worry about it,” the Taoiseach declared after RTÉ’s Sean O’Rourke dared raise the question of when the three long outstanding Dáil by-elections would be held.

Yeah, it’s just democracy, Sean – don’t worry about it! How patronising.

But when you allow a democratic vacuum to be created and grow, it will always be filled by other means – as it was last night when Right to Work protesters descended once again on Leinster House.

The gardaí had the bright idea of actually shutting the main gates this time as the demonstration approached parliament, well half shutting them anyway – and so avoided the ugly argy-bargy of last week’s mini incursion.

That row had even briefly interrupted David Cameron’s political coronation in Britain as rolling news channels like Sky flashed up captions such as: “Irish parliament stormed”, but it was very much a storm in a tea cup – or more accurately a storm over a Taoiseach.

More like a scuffle or mini kerfuffle, but none the less the guards were determined not to be caught, well, off-guard, again and so prepared for civil unrest resembling that which brought Paris to its knees in 1968.

The Garda presence had been growing throughout the day, the tension broken by the sight of two young officers passing the time by trying each others hats on. Sweet.

The Right to Work march gained particular resonance with the Pfizer bombshell plunging the Dáil into gloom. Pfizer was meant to be one of the blue chip economic anchors that would be largely untouched by the slump. Not any more. No one’s safe.

But don’t worry, just because we are virtually the only Western nation without a job stimulus package despite having a record 433,000 people on the dole and another 100,000 forced to flee the country to find the dignity of work, Mr Cowen has a cunning plan.

Yes, in the O’Rourke interview, the Taoiseach mused that job creation is “the laser beam that we have to look at”. I’m sorry? Laser beam? That’s not even the usual business cliche jargon Mr Cowen specialises in – that’s just nonsense.

The last public figure I can remember talking about a “laser beam” was Dr Evil in one of the Austin Powers films after he’d been cryogenically frozen for decades.

As frozen, in fact, as democracy is in Donegal South, Waterford and Dublin South where the Government is too scared to hold the long overdue elections because it knows what answer it will get from a very angry electorate and as this (unelected) Taoiseach has allowed the 13-seat majority he inherited from Bertie Ahern to crumble to nothing, he can’t risk letting the people have their right to full representation.

Which also means Mr Cowen won’t put the much needed children’s rights constitutional amendment through as it would be impossible to wriggle out of the by-elections on the same day.

Democracy? We need to start getting very worried about it.