Logic, ethics, rules, fairness — yeah right. Just ask Enda

ACCORDING to some newspaper reports at the weekend, Enda spent a portion of his first year in office doing the sorts of things that TDs traditionally do: looking for stuff that (for the most part), his constituents should be entitled to anyway.

He made hundreds of representations about school grants and septic grants and passports and for one sports enthusiast constituent, enquired about tickets to the Olympics, (they are mad into the gymnastics in Mayo). Of course it’s all too easy to slag off this kind of activity, so let’s do it. There’s the obvious point that, at a time of national crisis, you would be hoping that the taoiseach of this country would be concentrating on national issues.

There’s also a commitment – made explicitly by Enda – that he wanted to move away from the previous clientelist system. TDs are supposed to be engaged in the business of framing national legislation, not as fixers for the people who voted for them.