Politicians cause our pain then they ‘feel’ it

Here’s a perfect example of Irish political culture. In September, 2009, when Batt O’Keeffe was minister for education, he absolved the State of culpability for the women who had been condemned to the Magdalene laundries.

“The Magdalene laundries were privately owned and operated establishments, which did not come within the responsibility of the State,” he said. “The State did not refer individuals to the Magdalene Laundries, nor was it complicit in referring individuals to them.”

Last week, O’Keeffe’s party, Fianna Fáil, put down a motion in the Dáil, calling for an apology to the survivors of the laundries.

A number of the party’s TDs stood up and ‘felt the pain’ of the survivors. The ‘Soldiers of Destiny’ are outraged that the Government has yet to apologise.

Dara Ceallery told RTÉ: “Our focus is on these women, to get justice for them, because they don’t have time. They are old and, in many cases, in a physical state of weakness, because of what they went through.”

What has changed? Fianna Fáil politicians will claim they know now what they didn’t know then. In reality, the change is far more depressing. Back then, Fianna Fáil was in government.

Now, it is in opposition. In Irish politics, the past is not just a different country, but one that may not have existed at all. And, crucially, politicians know that is how the electorate feels these days.

Last week’s Ipsos MRBI opinion poll showing Fianna Fáil to be the most popular party in the country spoke volumes about the electorate. The party is now at 26%, just ahead of Fine Gael, at 25%.

Labour are the big losers, falling further, to just 10%. It’s a few short years since the ‘Soldiers of Destiny’ suffered the biggest loss in its history.

Political sages had been wondering whether it was all over for the populist vehicle that Eamon DeValera had created. The country was banjaxed, and had been rendered thus by more than a decade of mismanagement and Fianna Fáil was the principle culprit.

The featherbedding had become outrageous. The nation’s coffers had been treated as an election slush fund for the party. A time of great prosperity, by which the State could have been permanently lifted out of its traditional moribund position, had been squandered. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Bertie Ahern was despised among large tracts of the population, whether or not such antipathy was deserved.

The people spoke at the general election. Fianna Fáil’s representation fell from 78 seats to 20. Many thought it was all over, bar the shouting. Waiting to assume power, Fine Gael and Labour thundered that things were going to be different, from now on. Never again would the citizens be disregarded in such a callous manner. A new politics was about to be born.

What has changed? Give a modicum of credit where it is due. Micheál Martin has performed well in raising the party from the dead. He has been a steady hand. He is well-scrubbed and gives good media. He has also expertly put clear blue water between himself and the past. Bertie who? Don’t believe I ever met the man.

Martin has also tapped into the soft spot for the penitent in Irish society. When asked about his party’s failure to act for the Magdalene survivors, last week, he repented.

“I do feel a certain degree of guilt that we didn’t include them at the time,” he said. “It was wrong that we didn’t do it. We said that honestly.”

Now, though, he is outraged at the behaviour of his successors in power. Now, he is in the business of feeling pain.

Having nursed the party back from its condition on life support, Martin and his colleagues have stepped up their strategy over the last six months. Keenly aware that the electorate also suffers from amnesia, the party has adopted increasingly populist positions on most issues.

A sheet of paper could be put between the economic policies of the last government and this one.

If anything, the constraints within which the Government operates can be attributed to Fianna Fáil’s mismanagement. Yet the party’s representatives rail against unpopular measures, like the property tax, as if it was dreamt up by the harsh and uncaring Blueshirt denizens.

Meanwhile, the government parties fume at this hypocrisy. Well, they’ve only themselves to blame.

Prior to the last election, Fine Gael and Labour waxed lyrical about a ‘new politics’, where people came first, where featherbedding and sharp practice would be given short shrift, where the citizens would get the government they deserved. Reform would wash through the body politic, directed and driven by that born-again leader, Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

It hasn’t happened. Even within constraints, there was still room for the Government to reform and let the political culture grow up and mature. Instead, all we got was more of the same.

There has been no effort to reform. There is no stomach to tackle the electoral system. The constitutional convention is a joke.

Health Minister James Reilly’s shenanigans with the primary care centres is straight out of an old-style Fianna Fáil handbook. Look, there’s Phil Hogan and Brendan Howlin getting sorted for their hospitals.

Any notion of closing the gap between governors and governed has been quietly abandoned. It’s as you were, minus the odd Merc, here and there.

The electorate is responding in kind. In a less conservative country, disillusionment with the Government might result in a thirst for more radical change.

Sinn Féin, however, appear to have plateaued (the party was down 2%, to 18%, in the last poll). Support for independents has shot up six points, to 20%, but this indicates voters retreating into their own enclaves, rather than looking for change.

There is much cynicism about politicians. Much of it is deserved, but politicians make up just one side of the culture. Voters have a major input. Right now, voters are looking for somebody to feel their pain, and Martin is doing as good a job as Eamon Gilmore did prior to the last election.

Voters who profess to want reform are also selective. How many voters, for example in Reilly’s constituency, are upset that he apparently used his position to favour his own locale? Reform, it would seem, is desirable, but only if it’s far from home.

That’s how it is now, in a time of living austerely. With no thirst for radical change, the main parties merely feel the pain of voters while in opposition, and inflict the very same pain while in government.

It shows that we get the politicians we deserve. If the public was thirsting for real change, politicians would change accordingly. Instead, the public gets what the public wants.

And everybody should take notice of that when they’re either complaining or voting.