What the Irish people really want

Over several days now in the wake of the Anglo Tapes, I have heard many politicians saying to the media, “What the people want is...”, as they prattle on instead to tell us what it is that they actually want.

Joan Burton is the latest one to mouth the piety, “What people in the country want I think is to hear the full story from everyone that is involved,” she said of the bank guarantee. Leaving aside the fact that politicians of all hues neither know nor care what the people want and are utterly divorced from reality in the main, they wouldn’t listen to us even if we got the chance to tell them what we truly want.

So, for the benefit of Burton and the rest: We want social justice and that means many powerful and influential people behind bars. We want our money given back to us, and we want an end to picking on the easy target that is the general population and more attention paid to the criminal behaviour of our so-called ‘betters’.

Only then, can we truly believe a word any of them say and only then also, will we be willing to ‘pull together’ to get the country out of this mess. Stop playing dirty politics, take the real hard decisions and lead by example and we may yet get our democracy back.

John Mallon

Mayfield

Cork