Let’s show a zero tolerance attitude to our bungling, incompetent rulers

THERE are currently three vacancies in the Dáil brought about by resignations. Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher stood down in 2009 after his election to the European Parliament. Earlier this year George Lee of Fine Gael resigned his South Dublin seat in a tizzy and Martin Cullen stepped down from his Waterford seat due to health reasons.

Fianna Fáil is blocking two of the by-elections because they would likely be hammered, if current public opinion polls are even remotely accurate.

During the week a letter-writer to the Irish Examiner suggested that the delay is in the public interest because the state would not only avoid the cost of the by-elections but also “the salaries and expenses in these times of hardship”.

“Why have TDs at all?” another writer asked the same day. That writer considered it quite extraordinary that the Government “could withhold the right of citizens to political representation by refusing to move the writ for no less than three by-elections.” This amounts to subversion of the democratic process.

Of course, Enda Kenny has failed to move the writ for the Dublin South by-election because Fine Gael would lose it. This ‘Brian and Enda Show’ is a farce. The Taoiseach has been refusing to accept responsibility for his failure to take corrective action while the national economy was going down the toilet during his tenure as Minister for Finance. The nicest thing one can say about Brian Cowen then was that he did not know what he was doing, and neither did his advisers.

Why should anyone expect him to be any wiser now? He is just as indifferent and inept when it comes to the people who have been losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

Pfizer was one of the greatest success stories of the Celtic Tiger era with its wonder drug Viagra. No amount of Viagra could revive the Celtic Tiger because this reckless Government has castrated it.

After what happened at Dell, SR Technics and Waterford Glass, we had the news this week of the 750 job losses at Pfizer. This was compounded by the announcement that Ryanair is going to locate 200 jobs in Germany because the Government is not prepared to provide the facilities at Dublin airport.

In fairness, it would be wrong to blame the Government for what happened to the 750 Pfizer employees who are losing their jobs. What happened was a consequence of the company’s takeover of Wyeth. When two such companies combine, job duplication is inevitable and redundancies become a natural consequence. Pfizer decided to shed 19,000 of its 129,500 jobs worldwide. The 750 jobs lost in this country is a comparatively small cut — at less than 4% of the company’s overall job losses. But, of course, this is still a deadly blow for the workers and their families, especially in the midst of the current depression. Those who lose their jobs will join the 432,657 who were unemployed in this country during April.

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Batt O’Keeffe announced that the Government would do what it could to help those affected, but people should not hold their breath in anticipation. He has only been the minister since March 2010. Mr O’Keeffe’s predecessor was the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, but the Taoiseach changed “Employment” to “Innovation”.

The word “Employment” does not appear in any of the ministerial titles, which is a revealing reflection of this Government’s pathetic commitment to do something about the horrific unemployment situation.

In January 2009 the Government established a taskforce to tackle unemployment. It comprised officials from a number of government departments, along with nominees from the social partners.

The taskforce, chaired by the Taoiseach’s department, only met once. Mr Cowen informed the Dáil last September that future meetings of the taskforce would be convened “as necessary”. But it seems he cares so little about the problem that no further meeting has yet been called.

The Taoiseach and his department are behaving as if there is no unemployment problem. Under a Freedom of Information request it was recently disclosed that no memos, briefing papers or any other paperwork was prepared for Mr Cowen on foot of the taskforce’s one and only meeting.

This Government is no more concerned about unemployment than it is about the crime situation. Remember Fianna Fáil came to power in 1997 promising to tackle crime with zero tolerance.

This month David Curran and Seán Keogh were tried for the murder of the two Polish men — Marius Swajkos and Pawel Kalite — on February 23, 2008. Curran, who stabbed both men in the head with a screwdriver, was found guilty on two counts of murder, while Keogh was convicted of kicking the dying Kalite in the head after he had been stabbed, but he was found not guilty of murder.

Curran received a mandatory life sentence, while Keogh only got four-and-a -half years with six months of that suspended. He has 75 previous convictions, going back to 2005. He was before the courts at least nine times in 2007. In April of that year he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, but he was back in court that August facing charges of assault causing bodily harm, reckless endangerment, criminal damage, car theft, drink driving and driving without a licence or insurance.

He should have been in jail but he was on “temporary release” when he committed those crimes.

Instead of putting him back in jail, however, he was given bail. Is this anyone’s concept of the promised zero tolerance on crime? While Keogh was on bail for those crimes he became involved in the incident in which Marius Swajkos and Pawel Kalite were murdered.

IN May of last year Keogh was sentenced to five years in prison for criminal damage and a further five years on two counts of endangerment, along with three years for car theft and six months for driving without insurance.

Those sentences were to run concurrently. With remission, that jail term will end next month, but the latest sentence will begin then.

In 1997 Fianna Fáil promised zero tolerance towards crime, but one must ask if there is really any limit to the tolerance that we have been witnessing. Back in the 1990s the heroin scene still seemed largely confined to the Dublin area. This week we had the horrific news that children as young as eight years of age were using drugs last year in Cork.

Heroin is now a national problem and we are still blindly trying to handle it with the same old policies that have failed so dismally. Some 62% of those in the 18-to-23 age bracket treated at the Matt Talbot Adolescent Service in Cork city were heroin users, and 42% of those young people were carrying concealed weapons for protection against dealers to whom they owed money. Maybe society does not give a damn what they do to the drug pushers, but it will only be a matter of time before those people begin using the weapons on the innocent people they will rob to feed their drug habits.

It’s time to adopt an attitude of zero tolerance towards the bungling incompetence of this Government.