Taoiseach makes it hard to be fair to FF

I WOULD like to thank the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, for his grubby and incredibly cynical attitude to the electorate who recently reluctantly returned him to power in appointing Ivor Callely, John Ellis and Eoghan Harris to the Seanad.

In the run-up to the general election my wife and I and our two sons, aged 18 and 20, regularly discussed the issues of the moment and the parties at the dinner table.

The younger lad upbraided me once for my colourful description of Fianna Fáil as a party by and large lacking an original idea in its collective head and certainly with no high standards to speak of.

I did point out that there are notable exceptions and some fine individuals (Micheál Martin for his smoking ban, for example), but not many.

I tried to be fair in my discussions about Fianna Fáil, but its own history kept making this impossible.

However, trying to impart my life-long experience to an open and fair-minded 18-year-old was somewhat difficult.

Since the election, however, Mr Ahern has made my task much easier.

His continued inability properly to explain his personal finances while Minister of Finance (I want to be fair here, but he doesn’t help by not coming clean once and for all and be done with it), his political hugging of Beverley Flynn after she denied RTÉ the funds it was entitled to (leaving the taxpayer to foot the bill), and now these Seanad appointments, have clarified things wonderfully for me.

While most of this is par for the course, the real disappointment is that Eoghan Harris, an ‘independent’ journalist, did not see fit to tell the Taoiseach what to do with his job offer.

Instead, we now have another Fianna Fáil poodle in the Oireachtas. What a pity.

Now where’s that young fella gone, so I can patiently educate him to standards in Fianna Fáil — the main party ofgovernment in the state.

Paul English

13 Villarea Park

Glenageary

Co Dublin