Big-bucks Bertie does only half the job of US and French presidents

WE have never had it so good and we have a Taoiseach who has been in power for 10 years, gaining enormous experience, and we expect him to live like the poor relation of those leaders with whom he has to mix.

Sure he has already had to go to his friends to ensure he had a roof over his head.

Enda Kenny noted the Taoiseach is earning more than US President George Bush, President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. But poor Bertie appeared to take umbrage at the highlighting of such irresponsible extravagance on the part of his Government: “Not only do most of these people have permanent and weekend residences but they also have holiday residences,” he told a stunned Dáil. “They have different rules where they are the beneficiaries of prolonged holidays, yachts and homes.”

And he added: “We do not and should not have those regulations.”

So, why did he bring the issue up? In fairness, it was Enda Kenny who noted the Taoiseach was earning more than the leaders of the most powerful countries in the world. The Rainbow government, in which Kenny served, provided leadership by forgoing a pay increase in 1996, thereby helping to promote the Celtic Tiger economy.

Bertie reacted to that disclosure like it was a low blow. After all he was the man who could not even afford to have a bank account for many years. Unlike Queen Elizabeth, he never had a massive yacht and, unlike President Bush, he does not have a huge jet like Air Force One at his beck and call.

Neither did Bertie own a soccer team like the former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who was president of AC Milan. Drumcondra, the team that poor Bertie supported, qualified for Europe four times in the 1960s. ‘Drums’ even won their way through to the second round and beat the mighty Bayern Munich in Dublin in 1962, but they eventually ran out of money and were absorbed by Home Farm in the League of Ireland.

Bertie does not have any helicopters, or racehorses like Charlie Haughey, who got his friends to invest in his son’s helicopter company and traded what seems to have been a notional horse to some wealthy Arabs to help fund his racing fantasies, while Dermot Desmond essentially paid for his yacht.

Nobody bought a yacht for poor Bertie, but he did get a dig-out for his house and some incidentals from his Manchester friends. Of course, the old lady of D’Olier Street and her gang of southsiders pilloried him for that. They were just out to get a poor, underpaid and under-valued northsider who made good through his own talents.

He did not do it the easy way by going to the London School of Economic to qualify as an accountant. As they say in soccer circles, “the boy done good”. He got to the top the hard way, and Albert Reynolds has the scars to prove it. What a shower of lousy begrudgers the whole lot of us are!

Do I believe that? Of course, I don’t, but I think Bertie does, or at least he thinks the rest of us are so gullible that we should believe it.

A book, Great Irish Speeches of the 20th Century, was published recently. Bertie’s brief speech in the Dáil during the week is like an antidote to that book because it exhibited poor judgment, lousy timing and a frightening disconnect with reality. Poor Bertie lost the plot.

Eamon de Valera appeared to put his foot in his mouth in January, 1922. “I have been brought up among the Irish people. I was reared in a labourer’s cottage here in Ireland,” he told a stunned Dáil “I have not lived solely amongst the intellectuals. The first 15 years of my life that formed my character were lived among the Irish people down in Limerick; therefore, I know what I am talking about; and whenever I wanted to know what the Irish people wanted I had only to examine my own heart and it told me straight off what the Irish people wanted.”

The speech was in reaction to a newspaper editorial questioning his opposition to the Treaty and alluding to his foreign ancestry. The offending editorial had concluded: “The Irish people must stand up and begin their freedom by giving their fate into the hands of their own countrymen.”

It clearly touched a raw nerve in the Long Fellow, just as the criticism of his acceptance of the €38,000 pay rise struck poor Bertie in a sensitive part. When it comes to Judging Dev, which has become quite popular lately, Bertie could do wonders. He could even make the latter-day Blueshirts hanker back to the old values that the Long Fellow espoused.

Dev only promised a hairshirt, but that was before Charlie Haughey took over the Soldiers of Destiny and introduced the Charvet shirt. Poor Bertie can’t tell the difference.

Remember Haughey was pilloried for using money from the leader’s account on Charvet shirts and dinners at Le Coq Hardi. Each of the five Dáil independents now gets over €39,000 a year extra, tax-free, from the leader’s account, and they can spend it on Charvet shirts, or whatever they please. Ah, it’s a great little country! When Eamon de Valera came to power in 1932, he cut expenditure, but he did not cut back on the old age pension like his predecessors. Instead of taking a massive increase, he afforded real leadership by cutting his own salary by 40% from £2,500 to £1,500 a year. He also cut the salaries of his ministers from £1,500 to £1,000. Then, when he called on people to tighten their belts, he did so from a position of political integrity and authority.

SINCE the introduction of the 1937 constitution, the President has always been paid more than the Taoiseach. But President Mary MacAleese’s salary was not considered by the review body on higher remuneration in the public sector, so will the Government raise her salary from the £295,067 at which it currently stands?

One of Bertie’s biggest political assets was his ability to project himself as a common man with ordinary tastes. He had none of the trappings of ostentatious power, but this week he seemed to suggest he deserved extra remuneration for forgoing such pleasures.

For instance, President Sarkozy has a number of official and weekend residences. He currently earns €101,000, which is going to jump to €240,000 in the new year, while Bertie currently earns €285,413, and this will rise to €310,000 by 2009.

In one sense it is ridiculous to compare the Taoiseach with Presidents Sarkozy or Bush because France has more than 15 times and the USA has more than 50 times our population. Moreover, Bertie is only doing half the job of either.

Bush and Sarkozy are both heads of state and heads of the government, whereas the real comparison with what we are paying should be the combined salaries of President MacAleese and the Taoiseach — €580,477 compared with Bush’s €272,331 or Sarkozy’s current €101,000.

It doesn’t take an economist to realise that our politicians are engaging in extravagance from the Taoiseach to the independents. We are victims of political plunder and lousy leadership. If Bertie really doesn’t care, because he is getting out before the next election, this is also a gross betrayal of the Republic.