Our never-never land VIPs cling to comfort zone

DESPITE everything that has befallen our economy in recent times, we are still living in a political never-never land where nobody wants to grow up.

For starters, the Government doesn’t want to grow up. It is still pretending that some benign fairy from outside our shores will somehow turn up just in the nick of time to save us from the band of pirates called the International Monetary Fund, and so it is going along its merry way of plus ca change.

Our wild profligacy continues across the political landscape and the public service that underpins it. There is still no solution that can be entertained for simple anomalies such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who presides over a country of 80 million people, and the fourth biggest economy in the world, earning €220,000 while our government ministers earn €240,000.

Everytime the Government attempts to reduce pay, pensions or other benefits for our privileged representatives, there is some legal snag that puts the proposals back firmly on the backboiler. The same thing seems to happen when the recipients of cutbacks are the wealthy beneficiaries of non-means tested children’s allowances. No problem, however, when it comes to withdrawing medical cards from the elderly.

Likewise, the banks are stuck firmly in never-never land. Everything will somehow be fine and we can go on as normal, hold our board positions, our pension pots and the generous payments the Government still sees fit to allow us.

The AIB egm was an extraordinary exercise in brazen effrontery with heads of lending departments still presenting themselves for re-election which the proxy voting system as good as guarantees them, despite the outrage of shareholders. The resigning chairman and CEO, who allowed those votes to be exercised so as to secure their reelection, shows their lack of appreciation of the economic sabotage that collectively they have visited on the country.

The other big bastion of self-interest in the country, the trade unions, is likewise in denial about the necessity of growing up and taking responsibility.

Peter McCloone still hangs on to his well-paid sinecure at Fás and feebly defends his decision to do so because of the good work that so many Fás employees do. As if that was ever an issue. As if that good work could not continue without a chairman who fell asleep while the public purse was being ransacked by Fás officials and their government side-kicks.

The trade union that Peter McCloone leads, IMPACT, is also opposing the necessary redeployment of HSE workers. Well, he like the other never-neverlanders can go on playing make-belief until the IMF crocodiles appear on the shore, and then…

Margaret Hickey

Castleowen

Blarney

Co Cork