Honest politics? Just another empty promise

The botched “ambushing” of Mick Wallace by a government minister in the course of a TV debate should serve as a reminder that Fine Gael’s pre-election promise of a new and more honest, upfront brand of politics in Ireland was just that — another promise.

Is this way it’s going to be? That the politician who does the most digging on a political rival is the one who will win (or has reason to think he will win) a given debate or come out on top PR-wise? If this tactic of gathering information on fellow politicians is also being applied to ordinary citizens then we are all potentially at the mercy of a kind of tin pot Hibernian Big Brother.

We had a long running controversy in this country about the necessity of separating church and state. We now need to set about extricating politicians from developing overly cosy arrangements with our police force.

And we need to honour, not denigrate, those who blow the whistle on malpractice or questionable behaviour, whether it be in State-run institutions like the ones that blighted the lives of so many people in the past, or our garda force which is there to serve the public — not politicians in search of “ammo” to use against other politicians who are doing their job in holding government to account.

How disillusioning to find that the supposedly principled “open and transparent” TDs are just as grubby as the ones who wrecked both and got hammered by the electorate for their performance.

John Fitzgerald

Callan

Co Kilkenny