Truly deserving of our praise?

I HAVE scanned and devoured newspapers by the cubic metre in a frustrating attempt to find genuine reasons behind the plaudits that described former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald as the greatest Irishman, a national treasure, the renaissance man, a towering intellect, a true statesman, Garret the good, a real inspiration.

He was also attributed to possessing qualities such as to be involved in a vivid intellectual engagement, (rules me out) another one was, his lucidity as a statistician to analyse the country’s problems in depth, last but not least, his phenomenal command of statistical detail.

No disrespect to the dead but all these glowing attributes just do not square the picture for me. Any politician who dithers and dawdles in the hot seat, as Garret has done under the withering glare of Margaret Thatcher, is one of the reasons I trawled the newspapers to find something concrete in an effort that would enable me to say, yes he was all or some of the above mentioned plaudits. Unfortunately, I would have to bunch him together with all other failed Fine Gael politicians of our time, who failed the country — Liam Cosgrave, John Bruton and Alan Dukes.