Lack of leadership is not funny. Isn’t that right, Mr Dempsey?

LATELY the media has been the object of considerable criticism, founded and unfounded, whether in relation to Brian Lenihan’s illness, Noel Dempsey’s holiday or the Government’s appalling lack of leadership.

In the midst of all of this ministers continue to demonstrate that they know as much about leadership as a pig knows about table manners.

The Government has been talking about NAMA for 15 months, but it is still not in place. This week a successful businessman told me he has a multimillion euro project on hold because he cannot get the money from AIB. Another highly successful individual in the medical area cannot get a loan to buy a partially completed house.

Both projects would provide employment and preclude the necessity of paying unemployment benefit to some of those currently unemployed.

If a self-employed individual with the securest prospects cannot get a loan to build a house for his family, nobody else is likely to get a loan either.

There is still no assurance that NAMA would provide for anyone other than the relatives of some of the gougers who got us into this mess. If those gougers were in America, they would be in jail already, but the Government here is still wondering whether the outrageous behaviour should be investigated.

Anyone who suggests that the health of the Minister for Finance should not be national news in the circumstances is sorely out of touch with reality. Yet some elements of the media are more intent on cannibalising each other than in dealing with harsh reality.

If the media had been doing its job properly, we would not be in the mess in the first place. Some of the media were just as greedy in promoting the schemes of the bankers, developers, and politicians.

The media might not have been as critical of Transport Minister Noel Dempsey’s recent holiday during the worst of the cold spell if he had not treated the whole thing so flippantly.

He could have explained that he and his wife had taken a short break after the marriage of their eldest daughter. Many people would have found that understandable, but instead he breezed back, laughing and joking at the press conference, as if no one had any right to be upset about his absence during the worst of the cold spell.

He would have deserved some credit for breaking off his holiday in Malta, but not when he adopted the attitude that he could do nothing anyway. So why did he come home early – just to insult us? One would not go to a funeral laughing and joking because this would show an appalling lack of respect for the bereaved. In the same sense the minister seems to have shown little respect for those who had been suffering through the bureaucratic bungling during a harsh weather.

There are times when everybody, even politicians, must put his or her family first. That should be particularly apparent now while they seem to be playing a grubby game of dysfunctional families in Northern Ireland.

If the story of the Adams family were a soap opera on television, people would be saying the whole thing was beyond belief.

Gerry Adams would seem to have been totally innocent in the whole sordid affair, but one could hardly blame him if he has developed a particular fondness for the song, Here’s To You, Mrs Robinson. After all, Iris Robinson came to his rescue.

The antics of the Adams’s family were blown right off the screen by the story of Iris and her toyboy. This was like life imitating art, because the characters could have been lifted out of the movie, The Graduate.

In a sense it was similar to the plight of Hillary Clinton, only in reverse. Hillary was the innocent party in Bill Clinton’s antics with Monica Lewinsky, yet there are people in America who have never forgiven Hillary because she apparently forgave Bill.

She has been pilloried by right-wing elements that loudly proclaim a kind of Christian fundamentalism. What was Hillary’s mistake – she forgave Bill? These people, with their distorted sense of Christian values, seem to think that forgiveness is unchristian.

Iris Robinson was regretful to the point of trying to commit suicide and she has announced her retirement from politics. But that is not enough; some of the media have been going after her husband, Peter. For what – because he has forgiven his wife and the mother of his children?

Last week I was asked to speak at a promotion of the book, Holy Terrors, in Tralee. Transport Minister Noel Dempsey initially launched the book in Trim. “It should be compulsory reading for a lot of us,” he said. That is one thing a Fianna Fáil minister has said lately that I agree with totally.

Michael Clemenger recalled his abuse in the industrial school in Tralee in the late 1950s and 1960s. After he left the school in 1967, he went to the Dean of Kerry and told him of the sexual and physical abuse there, but the dean dismissed him.

For years victims were shunned by church figures who pretended not to believe what was going on.

After reviewing Holy Terrors and devoting a column to the subject, I received a letter from a priest who enclosed a letter from a local councillor in England stating he was not sexually abused while in the industrial school in Tralee during the 1940s.

“Many will read Clemenger and you,” the priest wrote. Then he asked how many would get the chance to hear what the councillor had to say?

FRANKLY, I would not normally write that anyone had claimed the Christian Brothers had not sexually abused him because this would imply that the fact he was not abused was somehow unusual.

Surely the priest was not trying to suggest we have degenerated to the point that it should be considered news that the Christian Brothers did not sexually abuse every person.

Nobody should think, because most Christian Brothers did not sexually abuse any children, that this in any way condoned the behaviour of those who did. Neither should anybody excuse an abuser simply because he did not abuse every child.

Frankly, I thought the councillor’s letter made sad reading. “There was, of course, ” he wrote, “quite a lot of discipline.” I find the use of the words, “of course,” pregnant with significance. This suggested there was physical abuse.

For too long our gutless politicians and church figures, like Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and even the Dean of Kerry, ignored the plight of victims. Last week, Michael Clemenger invited Fr Seán Hanafin, the current Dean of Kerry, to the promotion.

I have no doubt many priests around the world have done braver things, but for what it is worth, Fr Hanafin’s acceptance of the invitation was the finest gesture I have witnessed by any authority in the church in more than 50 years.