O’Rourke’s concern is misplaced
What a shame O’Rourke’s concern doesn’t extend to the people who lived through a decade of despair in the 1980s, and to the people who live in the sprawling housing estates, with no social infrastructure, that were built following crony planning decisions. What a shame it doesn’t extend to those who had to emigrate as a result of Charles Haughey’s feckless overspending between 1979 and 1981, and to those who endured the consequences of his GUBU government and the cronyism of his 1987-91 governments.
It’s understandable the Haugheys wallow in denial about the destructiveness of his periods in office, because to do otherwise would mean facing their own responsibility.
Of course, the Haugheys don’t have any qualms about the high living they enjoy thanks to the proceeds of Mr Haughey’s squalid financial deals.
Instead, they attack the makers of a TV drama and do not address Mr Haughey as the root cause of a culture that rotted every pillar of Irish governance from the inside out.
That rot ultimately led to such a failure of government that Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan Jnr could not rise above the mantra of cronyism, bred into them by Mrs O’Rourke’s generation of politicians who put the party before their own country, such that they failed to tackle the issues that led to Ireland being in the sorry mess it is in today.
Pianist Liberace used to say that he ‘cried all the way to the bank’. So pity about Mrs Haughey and Mrs O’Rourke, if their feelings are hurt by whatever way Mr Haughey is portrayed in this drama, and I’m sure that looking at their bank and pension statements, paid for by the taxpayer, will help them get over it.
