Price we pay for turning blind eye

THE Taoiseach used the opening of the Dublin Port Tunnel last week to attack “begrudgers”.

At the very time when a former Taoiseach was portrayed as being less than honest in his dealings with the people whom he represented at the highest levels of government, I think Mr Ahern would have been wiser just to have celebrated the opening of the tunnel and remained silent about those he regards as begrudgers.

After all, this is a democratic republic in which ordinary people have the right to complain about the activity, or lack of it, of those who put themselves forward to represent them. They may be right or wrong.

From the Taoiseach’s point of view they may even be tiresome. Without the right to complain, however, ordinary people are powerless.

The Taoiseach is a very successful man. He has been voted by a majority of the representatives of the people to the highest political office in the land. He spends large amounts of money collected in taxes to advance his views and cultivate his image. The least he can do is listen to complaints, however unfair he feels them to be, without a display of petulance.

For what it is worth, I feel we do not complain half enough. If ordinary people, and indeed their ‘betters’ in the media, had been more critical in the past we might not have had to fork out millions in tribunal fees to expose corruption in public life.

All of us, and especially this Taoiseach who was close to the action, turned a blind eye to what was going on then. The lesson to be learned is that we should be more critical than we have been in the past. If that means we are labelled ‘begrudgers’ by the high and the mighty, then so be it.

Anthony Leavy

1 Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13.