Lack of shame in top jobs has roots in Fianna Fáil culture of entitlement

SO CLASS, today we are going to concentrate on the lessons learned from the great recession of recent years.

It’s a little early, possibly, to be examining the legacy of this savage period of economic austerity which beset the country; the effects of which will be felt for many more years to come.

However, as any good history teacher will tell you, it is important to learn from what has gone on, and to try not to repeat mistakes.

I raise this issue because of what we’ve recently seen in the newspapers, and on the radio and television, concerning people employed at the top of some of our hospitals and charities.

It’s been a big shock to realise that during the years when Ireland was on its knees economically, and was the international poster child for financial recklessness, these people continued to munch down at the trough.

It’s little short of extraordinary that this brazenness survived our economic collapse, but not just that, it’s the survival of the attitude that goes along with it, when finally the whistle is blown. There is not one smidgeon of shame, of abashment, or any sense of “let’s come clean our number is up, we lived high on the hog for long enough”.

Oh no, what remains in the memory is the resentment with which many of the questions from members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) were greeted. There is a commonality of attitude through the upper echelons of the Central Remedial Clinic, St Vincent’s Hospital, and latterly as we’ve realised in Rehab (without doubt there are others too out there), which is quite astounding.

Putting them all together, one has to wonder did these people all go to the same expensive finishing school — the one where they were taught to believe they are worth every cent and more, and that it is simply impudence on the part of our politicians, acting on behalf of citizens, to want to know what they earn and why.

Where does this attitude come from? How did it develop into something so robust that it survived an IMF bailout?

I was reminded of where it might have come from as a panellist on Saturday with Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio 1. Also on the panel was PAC chairman and former Fianna Fáil junior minister John McGuinness.

It was widely acknowledged during the programme, including by myself, what a stormer the PAC had played that week, and how the politicians, led by their chairman, had done a really good and important job for Irish public life.

But how could one fail to recognise the enormous irony that it is a Fianna Fáil politician who is now the one to preside over the exposure of this attitude, a phenomenon which clearly has its seeds in the two decades during which we were governed by Fianna Fáil.

But last Saturday John McGuinness was in no form to listen to this sort of talk when it was pointed out that “Bertie’s pals” were all over the upper echelons of the CRC like a rash.

“I don’t know that,” began the response of the Carlow/Kilkenny TD, at a time when this fact was known by the dogs in the street. He then went on to say that actually he had heard that was the case. “That doesn’t prevent me or anybody else on the committee from doing what is necessary.” That is true.

When asked if this was Fianna Fáil politics he said it was “not my Fianna Fáil politics anyway and I would distance myself from any of them in relation to that”.

With gathering ire he told me this had nothing whatsoever to do with the work of the PAC, after I had the temerity to point out the possible roots of this culture. He then went on to say that he “acknowleged fully that these people had a Fianna Fáil connection, but said while he was “not shying away from it … don’t paint us all with the one brush”.

It was clear that John McGuinness — a politicians whom I have respect for — was not at all happy at any attempt to rain on his parade.

He did not wish to listen to the awkward truth that his party had been in power for so long that Irish people could hardly countenance anything different, and how they led from the top down in terms of that culture of entitlement, whether it was in terms of partnership agreements, pensions for ministers, packages for senior public servants and so on.

As we left the studio he turned and asked me, in what he would doubtless describe as jocose terms, and I less so, whether I was now a member of Fine Gael. This, when one is a political journalist and accused by a politician of being a member of whatever party is their opposition, is a no-win question, and a rather puerile one.

It’s another example of that FF prickliness, where they have managed, within a relatively short space of time, to make someone pinning responsibility on their shoulders seem like a bit of an oul’ nag.

It’s a fair enough point that Taoiseach Enda Kenny describing all this as “old politics” is a little rich given that agreement to award CRC chief executive Paul Kiely a payoff amounting to €750,000 was signed off last March.

The political reform promised by this Government has been a big disappointment, and hardens the cynicism of the voters, lowering their expectations further. But Fine Gael was not the dominant political force in this country for such an extended period. So it’s the culture of the “old politics” grimly persisting, and the really depressing thing is that it reinforces the sense of “learned helplessness” that was engendered in us during those FF years.

It is this which they imbued in us as a population and which caused us to keep voting for the party, despite knowing on a number of levels that it was not good for us.

WE NEED look no further than the 2007 general election. It was clear then that we were on the skids, but we chose to ignore this and re elected the government led by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. We too had been engendered with this sense of entitlement by this strangely symbiotic relationship we had with the party. Then it all came crashing down around our heads and theirs, and for a time Fianna Fáil had all the popularity of the bubonic plague.

But they’re creeping back — party leader Micheál Martin did well this week on the various controversies that are going on — and it will be interesting to see how the party does in the next opinion poll.

You see the way things are going, and the manner in which Irish people have had their political cynicism reinforced in recent weeks, it will be no surprise to see public opinion coming back around to the idea that FF are the party of power, and with perhaps just a little more oversight, deserve to be back in charge of the country.

That’s the problem with not acknowledging your history, or being quietened by the jibes of those who tell you that you are partisan and unreasonable for bringing it up, the same old mistakes are repeated again. And we are all left wondering why.