Pushed aside - but McCreevy is being rewarded for election stunt

WAS Charlie McCreevy rewarded or shafted? It would seem that he was both. He was offered the velvet shaft and invited to jump for the reward of a plum job in Europe.

Whether the appointment should be considered an honour may be another question, especially when one considers that he is being banished to the position once held by Pádraig Flynn, who descended to a new political low this week in blaming his wife for the bogus offshore account in which the £50,000 that he bummed off Tom Gilmartin was deposited. Flynn has become a class act who deserves a prominent place in Fianna Fáil's growing scoundrel index.

McCreevy was first elected to the Dáil in the 1977 Fianna Fáil landslide. He quickly became disillusioned with Minister for Finance George Colley, the uncrowned dunderhead of Irish politics.

Colley was one of the architects of the infamous 1977 manifesto, which virtually beggared the country so that Fianna Fáil could get back into power. Then in power he managed to alienate both the urban and rural workers with a pathetic attempt to balance our unfair tax system.

At the time, farmers paid just 5.5% of total farm earnings in rates and income tax, whereas those in the PAYE sector paid a total of 16% of their earnings in income tax. In the February 1979 budget Colley proposed a 2% levy on the sale of farmers' produce. Even thought they would still be paying less than half the tax of the PAYE workers, the farmers were outraged. In the midst of the ensuing uproar, Colley backed down and scrapped the proposal. The PAYE sector reacted by organising a series of protest marches. On March 11, 1979, some 50,000 people marched in Dublin and there were other marches in towns around the country.

Colley was contemptuously dismissive as he contended that nobody could seriously expect such a protest to produce Government action. About 150,000 marched in Dublin on March 30 and a further 40,000 turned out in Cork. Colley's handling of the whole thing had been incredibly inept.

Hibernia magazine wondered at the time whether his conduct was prompted by insensitivity or stupidity.

Charlie McCreevy was one of the backbenchers who revolted in 1979. They organised in the hope of getting Lynch to step down as Taoiseach at the end of Ireland's European presidency, but Lynch naively tried to pull a fast one by going early to make room for Colley. The move failed and Charlie Haughey was elected instead. The Short Fellow promptly proclaimed the country was living beyond its means. Of course his own lifestyle was, and would remain, the personification of the extravagance he was criticising.

From 1979 to 1987 the national debt quadrupled to over £25 billion. It doubled during the four years of apparent economic stringency while the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government was in power from December 1982 to February 1987. The cost of servicing the national debt grew by 20% each year after 1980. By 1986 Ireland was internationally recognised as one of the worst-managed economies in the western world.

The ratio of public debt to the gross domestic product was 140%, the highest in the world. McCreevy was one of the first people in the Dáil to speak out openly. He complained that general elections "were developing into an auction in promises" with scant regard for the national interest.

"We are so hell-bent on assuming power that we are prepared to do anything for it," he declared.

After briefly resigning the Fianna Fáil whip in early 1982 to avoid being expelled from the parliamentary party, he took the unprecedented step of tabling a motion of no confidence in Haughey's leadership during the infamous GUBU period. McCreevy became such a hate figure in the party that he was defeated in his bid for re-election to Kildare County Council in 1985.

Love him or loathe him, McCreevy had guts. He stood for something, and it is grossly unfair to lump him with the Progressive Democrats, who never really stood for anything but office.

The PDs were essentially formed to keep Haughey out of power, but they propped him up in government at the very first opportunity. Then they backed Albert Reynolds, but later upbraided the Labour Party for going into Government with Fianna Fáil. Yet the PDs went back into government with Fianna Fáil at the very next chance and have been there ever since.

MCCREEVY took an active part in ousting two Fianna Fáil leaders. Jack Lynch was essentially pushed at the end of this country's European presidency in 1979, whereas Haughey was challenged in the aftermath of the presidency of 1991. He initially survived a backbench revolt in October 1991 and a heave from within the Government the following month. But, weakened by those challenges, he was "persuaded" to quit a couple of months later when faced with the exposure of some of his financial affairs.

The European presidency seemed like a poisoned chalice.

In 1979, Fianna Fáil fared dismally in the European and local elections, but they fared even worse this year. History might therefore seem to suggest that the Taoiseach was going to be in trouble but remember the Short Fellow warned us about Bertie Ahern.

"He's the man," Haughey said. "He's the best, the most skilful, the most devious and the most cunning."

Bertie had a handy scapegoat in Charlie McCreevy, who had been behaving with contemptible arrogance. He was instrumental in the greatest political confidence trick since the infamous 1977 election manifesto.

In the run-up to the last general election McCreevy formally declared that there were "no plans, secret or otherwise" to cut back on Government spending, even though his Department of Finance had already secretly instructed Government departments to make cuts.

The Irish Examiner used the Freedom of Information Act to expose that blatant deception, only to have the Government respond with the most despicable exhibition of arrogance. It had the naked insolence to emasculate the legislation used to expose its shameful perversion of our democracy.

McCreevy introduced a bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act and took off for Cheltenham races while it was being debated in the Oireachtas.

Ministers are supposed to represent the whole country, not their own sectional or local interests. Yet he poured €14.8m into the Punchestown Equestrian Centre in his own constituency without even having the project properly evaluated. People in McCreevy's beloved horse industry were already being preferred by being exempted from income tax while earning millions each year. He also saw nothing wrong with accepting the hospitality in France of businessman Ulick McEvaddy. People do accept and reciprocate the hospitality of friends, but ministers should not accept such hospitality from somebody with whom the Government was engaged in a €150m project. Cabinet guidelines stipulate that "all office holders are expected to adhere to the fundamental principles that an offer of gifts, hospitality or services, should not be accepted where it would, or might appear to place him or her under an obligation".

McCreevy did the people of this country some valuable service, but ultimately he betrayed them by his contemptible attitude. Rewarding such conduct is a further betrayal.