Voters are feeling let down by our Government’s lack of leadership

SO, the Dáil resumes today.

Here’s something that every TD and Senator, especially every minister, should know.

They already know that they’re coming back to a jam-packed, roller-coaster session. The next three months will be the toughest many of them have ever known, particularly the newer TDs.

That’s because of the highly complex and difficult choices to be made.

It’s because none of the decisions will be easy. By Christmas they will have finished legislating for a range of cuts to public services, the introduction of a new tax on residential properties, fundamental decisions that will affect the capacity of people to save and to spend, and a host of other stuff. The stability of the Government will be surely, and sorely, tested by the weeks ahead.

But there’s one other thing that will make this Dáil term really difficult. I don’t know if our legislators know this already, but if they don’t, they can remember that they read it here first. Before they even start their work the people they represent are already really angry.

I’ve never been really sure what’s signified by texting into radio programmes. I’ve been doing a radio programme on Newstalk for a few weeks now, and a lot of listeners text in their comments to the show every Sunday. They don’t have a lot in common, except that one thing. Anger.

There are those who think that texters can’t be representative. I’m less sure about that than I used to be. For example, in the course of a radio programme you’re just as likely to get a slew of texts from pensioners as you are from younger people. Those who thought that older people weren’t comfortable with technology and social media have clearly never met a posse of angry Irish pensioners.

Last Sunday we started the programme with a discussion about the publication of topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton to you and me) in the Irish Daily Star.

We were more interested in talking about the consequences of publication, and whether, as seems likely, the decision to publish could result in the death of the newspaper.

Should a single editorial decision, no matter how crass, result in the loss of 70 journalistic jobs, and a further narrowing of the number of newspaper choices available? As it happens, our listeners didn’t appear to be too bothered.

We got dozens of texts in the course of a ten minute or so discussion, but not too many were exercised about the editorial judgement involved. I’d say about a third of the texters simply hated the Star, and the rest simply thought there was no point to a fuss about the British Royal family.

It was actually kind of sad. Those photographs were a gross invasion of the privacy of a young woman who had never done anything to offend anyone. To publish them “for the sake of a few shillings” was a decision unworthy of a newspaper that has often done sterling journalistic work. But the discussion of that decision only evoked a reaction to all things British, which I hope isn’t truly representative at all. But it was really visceral.

And when our discussion moved on to the speculation about pensioners — then the phone and text lines really took off.

The speculation had of course been started by Junior Minister Brian Hayes, who had been musing in the Irish Times that better-off pensioners had some kind of obligation to make more of a contribution than they are making now.

It was a rather striking intervention in the current debate about what should be in the budget — all the more so because the Taoiseach, and the Tánaiste had said in recent days that ministers and junior ministers were doing the Government, or the public, no favours by talking about possible budget measures in advance.

Despite that, here was one junior minister who seemed determined to clod-hop his way through one of the great political minefields. Pensions is also an area for which he has no responsibility — something Joan Burton wasn’t slow to remind him about later on Sunday.

So what was he at? Was he just musing aloud, or was he really flying a kite for someone else? After all, the Taoiseach did announce last week that the silly season is over, and this controversy broke just before the Dáil resumed. People who keep a close eye on politics are always interested in the timing of an intervention like that.

It looks, at least on the face of it, as if the minister was trying to set an agenda, or part of it anyway, for the new Dáil term. He was certainly inviting, and maybe even encouraging, a lot of inevitable media and opposition focus on tensions in government.

Of course, it was only one of a number of austerity-type stories that appeared over the weekend, of course. One of the Sunday papers had the minister for health demanding that 8,000 pensioners who earn €36,000 a year should give back their medical cards. Another had the Government deciding to test the boundaries of the Croke Park Agreement by asking teachers and nurses to work a 40-hour week.

But, as I said, it was the pensioners who drove the text machine mad. I made a conscious decision to only deal with texts from pensioners themselves during the programme, and not to read out any texts about pensioners from others.

ODDLY enough, pensioners are divided.

Later in the day, I actually met a woman — a lovely lady called Pat — who introduced herself as one of the people who had texted in. She is 77, lives alone, and has all the outgoings that everyone has, on an income made up of two pensions that adds up to around €36,000 a year. She argued — and she wasn’t alone — that some pensioners could do with less.

Others were inclined to the view that perhaps they could pay a bit towards the cost of free travel, or do without a full medical card. But most were just angry that they should be considered targets.

And the anger comes from two sources. The first is this feeling that they worked really hard, in times that were far more difficult, to raise and educate families (the taxpayers of today) in modest jobs with modest salaries. Now they’re being regarded as some sort of fat cat, and that’s deeply insulting.

But others are deeply angry — and this anger is much more widespread than the pensioners group — that the Government has in some sense let us all down. A failure to recognise the spirit that was there when they were elected, a lack of imagination and sensitivity, above all a lack of leadership — these are the messages that come through again and again.

There is a real spirit out there of willingness to play a part in digging us out of this mess, and the Government has failed to tap into that effectively.

As a Government supporter, I find that anger upsetting.

But I have to say this — if the Government fails to recognise that it’s there, it will spill over into something far more destructive before this Dáil term is over.