Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

For as long as I can remember the non-contributory blind pension has been equivalent to the non-contributory old age pension. It

She's an ugly bitch - and that's no lie

has been governed by the same means test level. For blind pensioners to suffer a benefit cut, while old age pensioners were let unscathed, was not only unjust, but was discriminatory. Benefit recipients have suffered a cut because they are blind and partially sighted. It is also galling that blind pensioners should be included amongst others who have suffered similar cuts, such as unemployment benefit. Even at the height of the Celtic Tiger years, unemployment amongst the blind and partially sighted was much higher than amongst the “able-bodied.” But the ultimate insult came on the morning of December 23^rd, just before 8.39 am, when the minister for Social and Family affairs, Mary Hanafin, stated, not just once but twice on RTE’s Morning Ireland news program, that in the budge pensions had not been touched/ This was a clear, unambiguous lie and the minister is a liar. The interview was introduced with the painfully cringing pun that the minister was getting her teeth into Irish dentists – some teeth!! This stemmed from a shameful example of how the minister was being swayed by prejudice into believing that certain dentists were making claims to the dental health scheme for patients who had actually died – whether in the dentists’[s chairs was unclear. The minister could not back up this claim as it was based on anecdotal information –better known as prejudiced rumour, which had been fed to her by like-minded officials who knew how eagerly she would swallow it. It reminded me of Nikolai Gogol’s unfinished masterpiece Dead Souls.

Gogol

  But this does not take away from the fact that Mary Hanafin TD is a liar. I say this knowing that any action which shows up the minister to be a liar will no doubt be rewarded by me being investigate3d (routinely of course or perhaps as the result of an “anonymous” tip-off) for social welfare fraud. I have nothing to hide, but it would be demeaning to me to have to speak the truth, that I ham in receipt of no other source of income than the measly pittance of the non-contributory blind pension. Even though I have nothing to hide, and given the ambiguous attitude of the minister towards the truth (which must surely seep down through the department) it is probable that something might be manufactured against me, and that I would be found to be in receipt of wholly fictitious money. (The onus would be on me to prove my innocence, which I could do but do I need the hassle?)

 I might have been prepared to accept the benefit cut, but the realisation that it had been made by such a dishonest person as the minister who wished to lie rather own up to what she had done showed how morally and  ethically bankrupt she is. The decision was taken because Ms Hanafin, like her colleagues, believes herself so much more superior to the Irish people, especially those in receipt of social welfare benefits. They are hard workers, so they like people to believe, who are not dependant on handouts, but I never chose to be partially sighted, and I would always have preferred to have a proper job but none was ever offered to me. But I consider myself, and the vast majority of Irish people to be superior to her – we have something she obviously lacks: integrity. She likes to act in the persona of the schoolteacher, talking down to her class, but she has shown that she has far more in common with the playground bully.