Ministers are rich men on high horses with no understanding of poverty

Brendan Howlin was taking questions on a radio show during the week from ‘ordinary people’ who wanted to talk about the budget.

A man began to talk. He used to work as a psychiatric nurse. Now, he’s receiving disability payments of €400 a week and this has to support him, his partner and his three children.

He wondered how he and his family could be expected to survive.

Howlin rushed to remind him of the sacrifices all of us had to make to rescue the country, and so on and so forth.

The caller interrupted Howlin to remind him of the fine salaries — about €100,000 — that he, and other ministers and TDs earn.

The caller said that some days he cries when trying to deal with life, and its demands on him and his family. Our brave minister then said that he “understood” the difficulties faced by those on “modest” incomes.

So a man earning about €100,000 per annum can understand the difficulties those on “modest” incomes face? He can “understand” how people living in persistent poverty feel? He must be a wise man, indeed, to understand what living in persistent poverty does to the human body; the human soul; the human spirit. But if he does understand any of these things, then, surely, as one of our leaders, he would move heaven and earth to eradicate poverty, wouldn’t he?

After all, he and his colleagues in government are acting in our best interests, aren’t they?

But like the The Letter for the King, by Tonke Dragt, he is the man on his high horse who usually ignores those who have fallen on hard times.

He tosses them a coin, without looking them in the face. These “beggars” are a nuisance, easily forgotten, until, once a year, at budget time, the minister actually volunteers to “listen” to a few carefully selected “demographic examples”, until the ‘beggars’ become too emotional or he too uncomfortable.

Trish McHale

Ballyedmond

Clonbern

Co Galway