Politicians’ expenses - Callely can’t tell right from wrong

FIANNA FÁIL Senator Ivor Callely is lucky that none of the 6,600 people who joined doles queues in April are members of the Oireachtas committee he wants to arbitrate on his decision to claim travel expenses from his west Cork holiday home to the Seanad.

Even if they were it must be assumed that Taoiseach Brian Cowen will resolve the matter long before it becomes an issue for a committee of politicians ruling on the behaviour of a political, and in some instances a party, colleague. Mr Callely’s statement to the Seanad – all 160 seconds of it – was so unsatisfactory, so evasive and insensitive to the needs of the day that it renewed lingering suspicions about Mr Callely’s fitness for political office of any kind. Not only was the statement a water-off-a-duck’s-back shrug towards any idea of propriety in public life, it was a clear rebuff to Mr Cowen who had ordered an explanation.

Mr Callely has claimed €81,015 since his nomination to the Seanad in 2007. Though his website, just yesterday afternoon, said he “continues to live in Dublin North Central” a proportion of that figure was based on travel expenses incurred travelling from a holiday home in west Cork.