Irish Examiner view: Public is not so forgiving any more

Landlord controversies

Billy Kelleher accepted that what happened was an “oversight” on his part rather than moving to blame the letting agent, a move favoured by others in a similar position.

Since the departure of Robert Troy as a minister of state, the revelations have come dropping slow. Politicians of various parties have been shown to have rental properties which were not registered properly with the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), from Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly to Sinn Féin TD Johnny Guirke.

Earlier this week, the list of errant politicians was swelled by MEP Billy Kelleher, who acknowledged that he had not registered a property in Cork with the RTB for two years.

Kelleher did depart from what is now becoming a familiar script in that he accepted that what happened was an “oversight” on his part rather than moving to blame the letting agent, a move favoured by others in a similar position.

It’s understandably difficult for many readers to muster sympathy for politicians failing to reach even the minimum standard of compliance in this matter.

Unless a politician has a property empire with dozens of properties, it shouldn’t be beyond their capabilities to register the apartments or houses involved, and to do so correctly without having recourse to blame a third party for their own omissions.

It’s also difficult to understand why the politicians involved didn’t take the initiative and come forward to own up to their errors once Troy got into hot water.

One of the oldest political cliches is that the original sin may not destroy a career, but covering up that sin often causes far more damage than making a clean breast of it early on. Failing to register properties properly might or might
not have brought Troy down, for instance, but the drawn-out mess of excuses, clarifications, and explanations which followed proved damaging for his ministerial career.

There may have been a period in the recent past when the public might have accepted a politician acknowledging a mistake and moving to correct the situation. The fact that politicians are still being exposed for non-compliance rather than volunteering the information themselves means that period is long past.