Time communities did it for themselves

The ratio of virtuous to venal politicians at local level is probably no different to that ratio anywhere else on the political pyramid but by their very immediacy, by their in-your-face familiarity, their foibles are all the more easily seen and criticised.

Time communities did it for themselves

They are — or, in many cases, were — the squeaky wheels in the political process that has done so much to shape Ireland’s landscape, infrastructure, towns and rural development; our self image and our attitude towards participatory democracy too. Where familiarity should have bred reassurance it too often and unfortunately bred something approaching contempt.

It is a sad fact of how politics is perceived that the crossroads fixers, the obviously self-serving and profoundly distasteful, have had a far greater influence on how our precious and undervalued democratic process is viewed rather than the virtuous, well intentioned and decent majority of local politicians. To paraphrase Shakespeare’s lines from Julius Caesar: “The evil that local politicians do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

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