Mick Wallace should know about people in glass houses

It is a tad rich Mick Wallace announcing Shatter should resign when, whoops, he has a history of tax issues

AFTER, like, 16 million years of hearing about the GSOC/Garda Whistle blower thing (I never exaggerate!), I have finally cracked and decided here goes, an article, but it’s not technically about the GSOC ordeal.

First of all, this all started because my brother and I were sitting down watching the nine o’clock news when we heard the usual about Minister Shatter and so on. We were nearly getting bored until we heard an almighty roar coming from Mick Wallace. Brilliant, we thought, the scraggy-haired man from Wexford has officially lost it.

After we let the roar sink in, Danny turned to me and said ‘Why is Wallace telling Shatter to resign? Isn’t that hypocritical?’ I must say I agreed with him, I’m sick of politicians telling other politicians to resign. We are all entitled to our opinion about the punishments people get for doing stupid things, mostly human error, I suppose. But, if we decided that the punishment for everyone making a mistake should be immediate resignation, who’d be left to do anything in the country?

Should Shatter really resign for making a fool of himself? Isn’t the whole public humiliation thing enough? For people wondering, no I haven’t done a U-turn in my politics, I’m simply sick to death of the word ‘resign’ being thrown around like it’s no big deal.

If, say, your bus driver was late to your bus stop, and you got seriously wet over it. That was a mistake, but should your bus driver resign? No, absolutely not. If your electrician couldn’t repair a faulty wire, should he resign? No way!

Same goes for the CEO of Rehab — should she resign just because she is getting an unhealthy amount of pay? No, the woman should take a pay cut instead.

In school, for example, if someone tripped, we’d all shout ‘waheyyyy’. If someone spilled their coffee at the office, we’d all chuckle and giggle to ourselves. !

I, for one, believe it is a tad rich of Mick Wallace to suggest Shatter should resign when, whoops, he has a history of tax issues. Did he resign for those? No. Should he be suggesting other people must go, when he has that record behind him? Absolutely not.

I do admire Mick’s bravery, let’s say, for trying to shake up the Dáil dress code. However, I rarely see him ever coming up with a good solution to a problem in the Dáil. As Bruce Lee said, ‘Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them’.

Basically, admit your mistakes before you bother criticising anyone else’s.