Eamonn Kelly: In A Rich Man’s World

From top Former Fine Gael minister, independent Tipperary TD and Ireland’s wealthiest parliamentarian Michael Lowry; Eamonn Kelly

Someone once quipped that champions league football is a game where 22 millionaires kick a ball around a field. In the same vein you might say that the Dáil is a place where an assembly of millionaires discuss budgeting and poverty.

Wealth Creation Is Easy

I know it can seem mean-minded to go on about politician’s pay and pensions. But they really are quite generous and it’s no surprise to anyone really that we are represented by so many millionaires. They can’t help but be millionaires with the kind of pay, pensions and perks they enjoy.

But, apart from what some might think about wage and pension fairness and so on, such well-paid positions may actually have the effect of putting politicians out of touch with the lives of ordinary people. If wealth is coming to you as easy as it comes to Irish politicians, it must be very difficult for them to conceive of people who cannot create any wealth whatsoever.

It’s little wonder then that wealthy right-wing politicians from privileged backgrounds often conclude that poor people aren’t trying hard enough. To the fortunate in this society, wealth acquisition is a cinch, because wealth begets wealth.

But for a class of people who are creating policy and budgeting for others, it is a deadly delusion to assume that wealth creation is easy, particularly when you consider that Irish people were landed with such a huge bill after the banking collapse, along with austerity for their “sins”, due in no small way to gross mismanagement by the same overpaid political class.

The Political Rich List

Michael Lowry, the disgraced Fine Gael politician, now independent, tops the rich list, because the people of his constituency re-elected him in a landslide, impressed no doubt by the following Wikipedia entry, and deciding he was just the man to be sending to Dublin to crack open the coffers.

“A succession of political scandals pursued Lowry throughout his time in office. These included allegations of irregularities relating to the granting of a mobile phone licence to Esat Telecom, which were later investigated by the Moriarty Tribunal, plans for the Dublin Light Rail System and the closure of rural post offices. The 1997 McCracken Tribunal revealed supermarket tycoon Ben Dunne had paid IR£395,000 for an extension to Lowry’s home in Tipperary.^[5] The Tribunal concluded that Lowry had evaded tax. This allegation prompted Lowry’s resignation from the Cabinet in November 1996. Taoiseach John Bruton announced that Lowry would not be allowed to stand as a Fine Gael candidate at the next election, and he resigned from the party.”

He ran for election as an independent, topping the poll in three successive elections, and now tops the political rich list.

You hear the word mandate bandied around a lot in politics, but what exactly is the mandate for this politician from the people of his constituency? It’s a fair question, because he’s not alone among Irish politicians in having a chequered career endorsed by poll-topping returns. Maybe they just think he’s good at appropriating lots of cash from various sources. Which he apparently is. And that, in an Irish politician, are really the only skills required by a hungry electorate.

The Public Sucks

Maybe the reason Irish people keep re-electing millionaires, even those ones with dubious pasts, is that ultimately, the electorate doesn’t admire policy creation or social equity quite as much as it admires raw brute power and cold cash.

The American comedian George Carlin once said that he never complains about politicians. He listens to other people complaining, as if politicians come from some other rarefied reality, rather than from the ranks of ordinary people. He reasons that if politicians suck, well then, the public must suck too. The politicians are a reflection of the electorate. You’re simply not going to produce a high-minded politician from a low-minded electorate. As Carlin quips, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out (the exception to this of course is Michael D. Higgins, a testament to the high-mindedness of the Galway electorate).

Over-paid, over-pensioned and overbearing

Ultimately, the electorate are the architects of an arrangement where an assembly of over-paid and over-pensioned millionaires make budgeting decisions for everyone else, and then the same electorate, with their Christian credentials to the fore, are aghast at the social injustices this system produces, blaming it all on the politicians.

While George Carlin makes a valid point, he spoils it a bit by saying he never votes. But he’s a comedian and this is just a setup for a fresh joke: he reasons that if he doesn’t vote he has every right to complain, but that if he did vote he’d have no right to complain, because he’d be partly responsible for electing the self-serving politicians in the first place. By voting, he has relinquished his right to complain.

Eamonn Kelly is a Galway-based  freelance Writer and Playwright. His weekly round-up appears here every Monday.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

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Eamonn Kelly: The Week That Was Eamonn Kelly: We Have Our Fund And That’s All That Matters Eamonn Kelly: The Irish Aversion To Complaining Eamonn Kelly: Uncertain Futures