Fine Gael’s Dublin Bay South by-election candidate James Geoghegan (right) and Minister for Finance Paschal Donohue canvassing last Saturday in Sandymount, Dublin 4; Eamonn Kelly

The positive thing about the promotion of James Geoghegan by Fine Gael for the vacated Dublin Bay South seat is that it opens a curtain on a world of privilege that most of us can only dream about. Here is a man who during the worst housing crisis in the history of the state just bought a house for three quarters of a million Euros.

Being put forward as a representative of ordinary people, a voice for those locked out of the property market, as he comically described himself, his background is one of leafy suburbia privilege. Both his parents are high court judges, his grandparents were TDs, he was a member of young Fine Gael in college and so on. But the real eye-opener is that he once worked lobbying for the tobacco industry.

This is no coincidence really.  A young Fine Gaeler lobbying for the tobacco industry fits right in to the neo-liberal political philosophy of profit regardless of social or environmental harm.

Just to be clear, the tobacco industry devised strategies for undermining scientific truth which are still used by right-wing media and corporations selling harmful products, among others. The Trump administration used the same strategies.

According to a 2019 HSE report, the majority of smokers are from a poor background, while the Fine Gael candidate, a barrister, is from an extremely privileged background. Essentially, he worked as a lobbyist in an industry that preys on the poor, that undermines science and that knowingly continues to market a product that has been scientifically proven to cause cancer.

In his lame defence Geoghegan claims that he lobbied for several companies and he wasn’t aware that one was a tobacco company. With all his education and advantages, and with his sights set on elected office, here is a barrister who offers ignorance as a defence.

Expendable

This conjunction of the philosophies of Big Tobacco and neo-liberalism raises further questions. Are neo-liberals blind to the social collateral damage caused by their policies? Do privileged Fine Gael TDs see lower class people as somehow expendable, or less important than people of their own privileged class?

For instance, it was recently reported that 10 homeless people are dying per month in Ireland. Or, to put it another way, 10 people per month are dying from homelessness in Ireland. Or to put it yet another way, 10 people in Ireland are dying per month from exposure, as a consequence of the largely Fine Gael-created housing crisis.

The wording is important in things like this, because if you lead with 10 homeless people, the reader may be blinded by a prejudice about homeless people and switch off. Whereas if you say 10 people per month are dying from homelessness, any prejudice the listener might have about homeless people may be temporarily by-passed.

So now you have a political party whose housing policies are arguably killing 10 poor people per month, putting forward a candidate who once worked lobbying for the tobacco industry which preys mainly on poor people. It’s easy to conclude that the philosophy of the tobacco industry and the philosophy of neo-liberalism are similar in their disregard for those without wealth.

Seen in this light, homelessness and cancer deaths from smoking seem less like accidental by-products of policy, causing damage further down the social scale, and more like disregard for those down the social scale, leading to the creation of policies that ultimately damage them.

Once you see that, then everything else about the ideology of neo-liberalism falls into place, and the sometimes callous-seeming policies make perfect sense.

Faulty Perception

Is it possible that being in the grip of an ideology like neo-liberalism, has a similar blinding effect to being in a cult?

Because neo-liberalism appears to be not only a problem of social inequity, but also a problem of perception, by those from privileged backgrounds, in genuinely understanding that all classes are equal.

This is maybe why neo-liberals barely notice that their housing policies are now killing ten Irish citizens per month, or that lobbying for Big Tobacco is an atrocious way to make a living, on a par with drug-pushing, if the truth be faced.

Over the last number of years, the rate of smoking in Ireland has been declining. It is the job of a tobacco lobbyist to reverse this trend, using arguments of anti-science. Here’s one now who might one day be a minister for health.

That Fine Gael would think such an individual is a good candidate for public office indicates that Fine Gael too must also subscribe to the tobacco industry view that the ends justify the means in terms of creating profits and maintaining power and privilege.

From this it is natural to conclude that Fine Gael have no problem in creating political outcomes that may cause real damage to people lower down the social scale.

Eamonn Kelly is a freelance Writer and Playwright.

Previously: Eamonn Kelly on Broadsheet

Pic via James Geoghegan