Fianna Fail’s death-wish
Why has there not been a national outcry? Brian Lenihan has announced his plans for social welfare cuts. He believes the high levels of welfare payments are preventing the country from getting out of the recession, and like a good Thatcherite believes that current levels of welfare benefits are a disincentive to work.
(This isn’t a Ciaran Parker hoax: it can be read here.
While he is busy spending the country’s money on bailing out Anglo Irish Bank, it may have slipped his attention that there are very few jobs out there. So are people to starve? In many cases it is not the high level of welfare payments that are acting as a disincentive, but the fact that those seeking the few jobs available often find relatives of Fianna Fail (and Fine Gael) politicians always landing the jobs in front of them.
It seems that efforts have been made to keep this news story off the front pages and the television news. The Fianna Fail party obviously realise that were it to be generally known their opinion poll ratings would be in negative figures, so they wish to deceive the voting public.
I honestly think that Fianna Fail has been taken over by a Doomsday Cult. I don’t think they will care if they suffer electoral meltdown. After all they’re in government, and who are the electorate? A crowd of whingers. But while they may feel county councillors are an expendable group of yokels with no real power vis-à-vis local government executives, they should remember that they are the people who elect the bulk of An Seanad. I would not be surprised if, following the next general election – which may be sooner than later), there will be numerous Fianna Fail TDs looking for a back-way into the legislature through being elected as a senator.
These statements of Lenihan have nothing to do with economics. They stem from social prejudice. Also, let us remind ourselves that Lenihan is a lawyer and not an econom9ist. He is a hostage of the senior, well-paid officials of the Department of Finance, and he is demonstrating a bad dose of Stockholm syndrome.
Lenihan really has a cheek. A man who had his university fees paid from his third year in College (as well as free rooms in Trinity), and this as a result of a scholarship awarded on the results of an examination. This wasn’t a state examination like the Leaving Certificate, or an end-of-year examination where members of staff from other universities act as consultants or advisers, but an internal examination, marked solely by members of the College’s staff – in this case the staff of Trinity’s Law Department. There was no secrecy here. Brian Lenihan’s identity was clearly evident to the examination markers. They could plainly see the papers belonged to the son of one of the country’s leading politicians. The markers did not have to think whether he was good enough for the scholarship; rather they had to wrestle with what might happen if they didn’t give him the scholarship, and how this might affect funding to Trinity in the future were Fianna Fail in power.
My personal recollections of Brian Lenihan Jr in Trinity College in the mid ‘80s was of an obese oaf. I recall how at cumann meetings (yes, I attended them) he would sit Buddha-like, surrounded by is arse-lickers and groupies, hanging on every word of drivel as if it were an intellectual pearl of great price.
