Marking Time

How nauseating, in view of all this, to see Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, reduce this whole controversy, this nexus of patronage and sleaze, to a cynical game of scrabble, of bending and twisting words so that both parties can walk out claiming to be vindicated. Taking large amounts of money from business, as the Taoiseach has said today, was an error and a misjudgment not because it was wrong, not because there was a massive conflict of interest, but because it came out into the open and caused grief and consternation to the Taoiseach and his friends. The Tánaiste and leader of the Progressive Democrats sits beside him and applauds that particular statement.

What the Tánaiste is doing today is propping up an unreconstructed Fianna Fáil Party, still defending sleaze after ten years of investigation. Was it for this that the Tánaiste flew to the tops of the lamp posts all over Dublin to tell us we needed him in Government to straighten out the Fianna Fáil chancers? That event has now been exposed for the hollow stunt that it was.

He would not dare repeat it at the next election. He might try, but at least nobody will believe him this time. The lamp posts will be left to the poodles of Ranelagh to do at the base what the Tánaiste is doing today to the alleged standards he defended when he climbed up his ladder.

Joe Higgins TD, 3rd October 2006

One view that has been expressed during the debate over Bertie Ahern’s troubles is that we should not be devoting so much time to this relatively trivial matter. Sure, the Taoiseach has some grey areas in his financial past, haven’t we all, and anyway it’s a personal matter, nothing to do with running the country. We should put our energy into the real problems, the health service, increasing crime rates, road deaths, the over dependency of the economy on the unsustainable property boom, to name but a few.

I don’t agree with this view. I think that the issues raised by Bertie’s problems are more fundamental. They go to the heart of how we operate government and how we want democracy to work in this country.
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