Voters ask for favours then complain about favouritism

AH, the Dáil, what a shower of hypocrites — the voters that is, not just the politicians.

Outrage rightly greeted the latest shenanigans of stroke specialist, Dr James Reilly, when it emerged the health minister had fast-forwarded hospital projects that just happened to be in the constituencies of his Cabinet buddies, even though the poverty-stricken HSE listed them as non-priorities.

To add gravy to the train tracks, Public Expenditure Reform Minister, Brendan Howlin, authorised extra cash for a non-priority project in his Wexford power base.

Gravy ‘train’ is an apt analogy, as Dr Reilly has the unfortunate look of a silent-movie villain tying an innocent young lady to the railroad as a locomotive approaches. But while the young lady in the flickering black-and-white films was rescued by the hero in the nick of time, as the mustachioed baddie was bundled away by keystone cops while twiddling with his whiskers, life is just not like that in the technicolour twilight of small-town Ireland — and that is how locals like it.

The voters appalled by blatant favouritism for ministerial constituencies that receive the few goodies this Government has to offer are also demanding their cut of the cake.

‘What is the point’? whinge the electors of south Dublin, ‘in having a justice minister represent us if he won’t keep our garda station open by shutting down someone else’s’?

Protestors insisted Alan Shatter will kiss their first preferences bye-bye if he persists with the perfectly logical policy of rationalising the police presence across the country.

‘Don’t give special treatment to them, give it to us,’ seems to be the mantra ministers are bombarded with by voters — so why act surprised when they fiddle with the health budget to help their own backyards?

The West was meant to awaken after finally gaining its own taoiseach, but why should such political opportunism still be desired or delivered? The Mayo men and women moaning that they don’t get the gifts from a trickle-down taoiseach would be the first to complain if Cork or Dublin was benefiting from a local head of government.

But, then, Enda Kenny has been too busy of late to pay much attention to home, as his rollercoaster ride from clapped-out to ‘prom’ king in the space of a few hours illustrates.

So often a dead-letter office, a crackle of energy suddenly surged through the Dáil in the early hours of Thursday, but, looking down from the press gallery at 1am, Mr Kenny seemed exhausted.

The toll of his disastrous handling of the Magdalene laundries inquiry was showing, and there was still no final word from Frankfurt that the long-range Anglo escape act would get the all-clear.

Let down by advisers whose wage-cap-busting high earnings are in direct contrast to their low emotional intelligence, Mr Kenny had failed to lead on an issue like the laundries, which his natural talents would have excelled at.

Instead, he followed, and found himself becoming the repository of national disgust at the barbaric system of bygone State slavery, rather than the conduit through which national remorse could be used to cleanse the stains of history from its victims.

Say what you like about being able to master detail or contextualise a complex social and economic narrative, but Mr Kenny is, at, heart a decent, sound guy, who would have been genuinely distressed at the anger and hurt his lack of an apology caused to the survivors of the laundry hell.

The backlash against his failure to do the right thing saw Mr Kenny looking as bewildered and wounded as a kitten left out in the rain.

But the taoiseach’s serious stumble was not, as some claim, because he had other things, like the prom-note deal, on his mind, it was because he had know-nothing-but-numbers people in his ears.

Despite Labour’s belated hand-wringing, the party’s attorney general, Máire Whelan, must take centre-stage for advising that an apology would bump-up any compensation payments to the survivors. Shabby in the extreme.

Though the Anglo deal took the heat off Mr Kenny, the burn of shame deserves to linger.

However, if politics is the art of the achievable rather than the desirable, then the prom-note deal was probably as good as we could have expected the Government to deliver — and far better than we feared they would do.

It also shone a harsh light on the opposition, when Mícheál Martin showed that Fianna Fáil does have a future — but, unfortunately for him, that future is called Michael McGrath.

Martin let Sinn Féin do all the running on the Magdalene laundries and was then playing catch-up when the Anglo bomb exploded, making him look a little sad and bitter when he was left carping from the sidelines, claiming he knew a deal would happen all along, but this one was not good enough.

It would have been a tacky contribution from any opposition leader, but from one of the key members of the government that threw away this country’s sovereignty, it was absurd and rather pathetic.

McGrath, on the other hand, showed a keen grasp of the arguments, asked pointed, precise questions in a confident Dáil performance, and made it clear he was putting the national interest ahead of a party one.

But, then, Martin is so busy trying to face all ways on all issues, his head must be in permanent rotation.

He is still to express an opinion on the X-Case legislation, for fear of offending anyone — is 21 years really not long enough for him to form an opinion?

Martin gets annoyed when people call him indecisive — but he can’t make up his mind what to do about it.

But, then, maybe the old adage is true, and we do really get the politicians we deserve.

It’s almost as if Irish voters factor in the inevitable fiasco/back-scratching when making their ballot-box choice, and allow their representatives an airbag of incompetence, so when TDs confirm our low expectations we just shrug and say, ‘well, what did we expect’?

So, maybe, if we stopped being such hypocrites ourselves it would make it harder for the stroke specialist, and his hospital-hungry Cabinet chums, to wriggle off the hook as well.