Laws on excrement and criminal damage should be applied equally

It is a truism that the law is an ass.

Pity the poor German national, clearly disturbed, who recently received a one-year sentence for storing excrement in his apartment somewhere in Cork city.

This case made me think of the Alp-sized mountains of excrement, of the bull and horse variety, trotted out at the banking inquiry by the avalanche of sweet smelling but foul bankers and politicians, who fiscally defecated on a whole country over several years.

While they may have left a particularly bad stench, they sailed off to deploy their manicured slurry elsewhere.

There hasn’t been a hint of a sanction for their behaviour.

And not to mention the untreatable but chronic epidemic of verbal diarrhoea witnessed daily from our law makers in the Dáil, regularly cramping our leaders’ ability to answer a simple question.

This political slopping out by mature and powerful men and women, which is regarded as the cut and thrust of politics, would be frowned upon in the changing area of the local crèche.

In the meantime, the poor German has rightly faced the full but dysfunctional rigours of the Irish justice system and is forced to pay his debt to society.

John Leahy

Wilton Road

Cork