Political class looking after itself

The ongoing debate on the Croke Park agreement, and the Taoiseach’s statement in recent days that it will run its course, should surprise no one in this country, especially in the private sector and the lower levels of the public sector.

I think a famous quote from the US constitution stated: “For the people, by the people, on behalf of the people”. In an Irish context it has been re-drafted: “For the public sector, by the public sector, on behalf of the public sector”.

Mr Kenny, a product of the public sector, and most of his colleagues, are from the same school and are shamefully protecting their own self-serving pay and conditions, ably guided by the real power in this dysfunctional economy, the trade unions and the Labour Party.

Any pretence that Fine Gael would stand for the rest of us is now gone. The shameful pull back on the special allowances by a Labour minister surely nailed to the mast the self-serving nature of the current coalition. They have created a beneficial communist state within a state for their own benefit. The Government parties and the public sector are the main beneficiaries of years of special allowances and special pensions, created by themselves for their own benefit.

The end result will be financial disaster for this country as the private sector that is expected to fund this system is filleted. The trade union movement, while claiming to defend the rights of the workers, is defending the indefensible. Instead of calling to book the rot within the system, they defend it to the end. The revelations of the packages that union leaders have created for themselves must sicken and shock us all, none more so than poor union memberships that pay for these salaries.

The hundreds of thousands of people on the dole, many of them the victims of their unions, who made demands on their employers, will feel particularly betrayed. The troika will in the end bring down the underwear allowance ... and all the other do-your-job allowances as the whole rotten system will collapse, just like the former communist states did in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, the whole political system is reeking from the same self interest and is obviously beyond redemption. A new political party to represent the self-employed and junior grades of the civil service is the only hope as we watch the officers moving around the chairs of the Titanic as our emerald isle heads for the iceberg rudderless and leaderless, and drowning in the self-interest of our corrupt political class.

Peter Monahan

Mornington

Drogheda

Co Meath