PDs as morally bankrupt as their allies

WHAT has happened to political integrity in the Progressive Democrats since Des O’Malley took a back seat in the organisation?

Since the 1997 election, the survival instinct may have forced them to cling to Fianna Fáil, holding their noses in the face of a long string of tribunal scandals and ministerial incompetence.

In those circumstances, some element of compromise of their supposedly high standards could be regarded as inevitable.

However, the McCreevy/Parlon decentralisation plan, unveiled in the 2003 budget, was as shameful a piece of political cute-hoorism you’ll see.

The PDs were seen to be actively involved in divvy-up of public service jobs, scattered to the various constituencies with little or no regard to the same Government’s much touted national spatial strategy, published only one year earlier. This exercise exposed the PDs as being just as morally bankrupt as their FF partners.

Now we have the attempt to buy the middle-class vote in the urban centres by promising to abolish stamp duty on houses, as announced by Mr McDowell in advance of the party think-in in Malahide.

I was expecting a giveaway pre-election budget from Fianna Fáil, but they’ve now been outflanked by the PDs.

Mr McDowell claims that Government doesn’t need the 2.9bn raised annually by this tax, at a time when there is clearly insufficient money going into such areas as refurbishment of school buildings, psychiatric hospitals, provision of social housing, care for the elderly, services to the handicapped and those with special needs, etc.

The PDs are shameful and shameless.

Peter Molloy

9 Haddington Park

Glenageary

Co Dublin