Poor Bertie is as power-mad and greedy as any of his predecessors

THE Government was forced into a U-turn over the pay raises this week. Bertie Ahern was right to say they would get no credit for the gesture. They deserved none.

They made a dreadful mistake in accepting the pay rise in the first place, and then Poor Bertie compounded it by trying to defend the indefensible with the most pathetic display of the poor mouth ever heard in Irish politics.

Eamon de Valera was the one who provided leadership by cutting his own salary by 40% when he came to power in 1932. He only promised a “hairshirt”, but that was when Fianna Fáil was stressing its rural roots and promising only frugal comfort. How things have changed since then. Charlie Haughey came along with Chavez shirts, his yacht and his racehorses and ever since the integrity of our politics has been shrouded in a ‘Celtic Mist’ with a stench of corruption that makes horse manure smell like perfume.