Public robbed to keep political gravy train running

GOLF swings, gulf-streams, and gold-plated pension schemes have all done their bit to demean the office of Taoiseach.

Though it’s rather rich of Fianna Fáil to accuse Enda Kenny of trashing the image of head of Government by urging predecessors Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen hand back the two grand pension boost his Coalition is giving them.

Mr Cowen says he does not have a problem in doing this, which is very nice of him. But what would be even nicer is if he handed back the €134,379 we gave him last year as well.

This might be a fitting gesture as Mr Cowen was the finance minister who teed-up the crash and then surrendered national sovereignty when he proved himself to be the most inadequate taoiseach in the history of the State.

But, best not mention golfing metaphors as Biffo gets a bit thicko when he is reminded of that infamous day on the links at Druids Glen with the Anglo boys -– just as Anglo was about to go under in the lead-up to the bail-out of Anglo, which in turn sank the country.

But, as Mr Cowen said – under oath – to the Oireachtas probe into the crash, nobody actually mentioned Anglo. At any point. All day long. As Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin mused, it would be like spending the day with Messi, Ronaldo and Rooney, and never once mentioning football. But then Caoimhghín believes that Gerry “Army Council? What Army Council?” Adams was never in the IRA, so perhaps truth is relative after all?

Indeed, the whole golf (balls) thing is rather difficult to believe, which sets the scene nicely for Bertie Ahern’s evidence next week.

Bertie is, after all, the only taoiseach in the history of the State to be, effectively, branded a liar by a tribunal of inquiry. The Mahon probe judged his evidence – regarding where all those sterling and dollar cash lodgements sloshing around the 20-plus bank accounts he held while finance minister came from– was, well, unbelievable. And for this sterling service to the State, Bertie trousered the biggest pension of all the ex-politicos last year, with a whopping €134,431.

Conspiracy theorists claim Enda is deliberately whipping-up the pensions palaver to make cheap political capital out of the subsequent outrage.

The show trial of the Fianna failures at the Oireachtas probe into the banking collapse is not really delivering the goods, so what better than the likes of Bertie and co being seen to grab a few extra grand in pensions to whip-up the old animosity to the men who triggered the crash?

Well, the problem is that while it may make others look greedy, it also makes Mr Kenny appear weak.

What’s wrong with setting a maximum pension cap for the public service? Hopefully, not an elastic one like the so-called “wage-cap” which is rock solid for ministerial appointments, unless you’re an ex-Fine Gael backroom boy or buddies with Enda and co, then, apparently, you can name your price and the taxpayer will be squeezed that little bit tighter to deliver the goodies.

But Enda is a man in a hurry, and probably too busy to consider such things. Why, he is so busy greasing the wheels of his local Mayo constituency machine on any given Monday that he decided to use the Government jet as a handy taxi to whisk him from a party political engagement in his backyard to to Brussels to moan at the Greeks for daring to suggest pensioner-punishing austerity-frenzy may not be the answer to everything after all. Mr Kenny’s handlers insisted the luxury jet was needed to fly him in style from his constituency because the EU summit he was attending was called at such short notice.

This is curious, as Enda had a full four days’ notice of the gathering, and a quick scan of the Aer Lingus website shows you can bag a nice leather seat on the airline between Dublin and Brussels for a very reasonable €59.99 at such short notice. And if David Cameron can fly commercial for his first visit to the US as British prime minister to meet Barack Obama, then why is such economic common sense beneath Enda? Mr Kenny’s crowd were most put out by the jet story appearing, deriding it as rather “tabloid” – such people always say that when they have been caught out. But, of course, it was us who got caught for the bill, as the Department of Defence estimated the flight from his Fine Gael glad-handing to Brussels Greek-bashing cost €9,200.

Now, it is not as bad as Mary Harney (hello Mary, hope you enjoyed that €63,478 pension we gave you last year for the amazing work you did with the health service) using an air corps plane to open an off licence for a friend. Or Calamity Cowen (who pocketed a pension of €2,584 PER WEEK last year for such solid decision making) finding it too tiresome to be chauffeured from Dublin to Limerick for a rugby match and instead ordered the jet to take him. But still, when the Government is snatching up to €140 a week out of the hands of 11,000 lone parents, it really does not look good. Even Labour chief whip Emmet Stagg thinks the lone parent cut is nasty and counter-productive. Well, that is what he said in an email to a constituent – after backing it in the Dáil – and before he backed it again when the email surfaced and threw his boss Joan Burton into deep doo-doo. Mr Stagg last troubled public consciousness when he told this column he was not overpaid as a TD, because on a mere €97k a year he earned “less than a plumber”.

Ah, the People’s Party, thank goodness we have Labour and their thrusting social justice agenda in power.

And it seems some parts of the State apparatus really do have money to burn. There may not be enough cash to lift lone parents out of poverty, help the homeless, or fund unglamorous areas of need such as mental health services, but oh-so secretive Government agency Nama is given the nod by Mr Kenny to waste €229,000 (and rising) of public funds in its pointless legal battle with another State agency over a freedom of information request from a journalist.

But we can be assured that Enda and Co will always stand-up for the pensioners – well, the pampered political class ones anyway – just not the Greek ones, or those pesky ones at home who thought that merely because they were lonely, cold, and on the bread line they could have their fuel and telephone allowances left in tact.

Don’t the moaning grey-haired brigade know that the dignity of the office of Taoiseach must be maintained at any cost, and those cuts were necessary to pay for fuel for the Government gulf-stream jet and the telephone number pensions of the politicians who flew in it all the way to the economic crash?