A is for…

TWO main items continued to dominate the past week in politics in Ireland: abortion and austerity. We are, of course, sharply divided on the issue of abortion, with the Catholic Church on one side and the Government on the other.

 

We are also very divided on the question of austerity, with the people on one side and the Government again on the other side.

To be honest, it is hard to know where the Government stands on the issue of austerity. Well, that statement is not completely true either. This thing is very confusing. We had two members of the Government come out over the past few days saying they are opposed to austerity, while at the same time, they have been imposing austerity on the people of this State since they came into power over two years ago and they have no plans to reverse those impositions.

Minister Pat Rabbitte of the Labour Party and his Cabinet colleague Leo Varadker both launched scathing attacks on the policy of austerity over the past week or so. It was great to hear both of them saying at last what the rest of us have been saying over the past two years and more. But where have they been all that time? Did either of them say one word to oppose the savage cuts in allowances to the most vulnerable people in Irish society? You know the answer to that one.

How could they oppose them and at the same time remain members of the Government that imposed them? They will continue to remain members of a government that took some very cruel decisions that adversely affected the lives of tens of thousands of ordinary people since they came into power. Words are cheap. By their deeds, you shall know them. Who do they think they are codding?

What I want Ministers Rabbitte and Varadker to say is, “We were wrong. We should not have interfered with carers’ allowances. We should not have reduced child benefits. Nor should we have crippled old-age pensioners by imposing savage new taxes on their miserable pensions. We are now going to hand back all those allowances, benefits and payments we took from the weakest, while we had the power. Because austerity does not work but makes matters even worse.”

I want them to go on and ask the Irish people for forgiveness and to make the following pledge: “If our Cabinet colleagues in Fine Gael and Labour do not agree with us on this very crucial matter, we will resign from the Government forthwith and take our seats on the back benches”.

They do not have to use those exact words but you know as well as I do this is not going to happen. Even the Tánaiste and Labour Party leader himself, Eamon Gilmore, like Minister Rabbitte, came out in support of Michael D Higgins when the President, on a number of occasions recently, slammed the policy of austerity. I just can’t figure it out.

On the one hand, these fellows tell us austerity is not working. But on the other hand, they continue to support austerity. I am wondering is there something wrong with me that I can’t understand this. Here we have highly intelligent people standing up in the Dáil and elsewhere telling us one thing but doing the very opposite.

It is one thing to tell us before an election that they are going to burn the bond holders and then take our wages and our pensions off us in order to look after the bond holders. But it’s another thing to tell us they oppose austerity, while at the very same time they themselves are imposing it.

For the life of me, I can’t work that one out. And do you know something? They are going to get away with it. Leo Varadkar stands a good chance of being elected as the next leader of Fine Gael and possibly the next Taoiseach when Enda steps down.

Now for that other item of political importance during the week, the question of abortion. It’s too early to say how much influence the bishops will have on how the politicians, especially those in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, vote. Fianna Fáil did as Fianna Fáil always does on such occasions – acted the cute hoors and took no stand on the issue.

I wouldn’t mind but we always had a form of abortion in this country down through the years. It was a kind of DIY abortion. I remember when I was much younger hearing about the attempts made by some mothers with large families to terminate unwanted pregnancies.

One woman with six children tried to have a miscarriage by cycling on a bone shaker of a bike over potholes. Another woman decided to white wash the gable end of her house and had to run up and down a ladder while laden down with buckets and brushes in order to do so. Another method was to take a very hot bath. But that was the most difficult thing of all because so few people had a bath of any sort in those days.

I can’t remember if any of those efforts succeeded. There was no Ryanair in those days to assist women to have an abortion in England. Actually there was no legal abortion even in pagan England then. As a matter of fact, I don’t think there was much talk of abortion then. A miscarriage was a more accepted term.

There were a lot of unwanted pregnancies in those days. Fine Gael TD Oliver J Flanagan once remarked there was no sex in Ireland before the advent of Telefís Éireann. He was wrong. There was far more sex in this country in the old days before television. There was nothing else to do during the long cold nights of winter and condoms or any other forms of artificial contraception were banned. And, of course, there were far more children in each family.

We are a strange lot, are we not?