An exercise in keeping spin doctors in their jobs

COMMENT

I wonder if you are as confused as I am about what was agreed between Enda Kenny and Angela Merkel at the weekend. Am I a bit thick or wha’?

I have been listening to various debates on radio and TV about our efforts to get help from Germany in order to get us out of our banking and sovereign debt crisis. I have read various newspaper articles on the subject and I have spoken to a number of people I consider experts in this field. But I am as wise today as I was last Friday.
The latest we heard from Angela Merkel on the subject – and I am writing this on Wednesday – was in the joint communiqué with Enda Kenny on Sunday when Enda managed to get her to agree that Ireland was ‘a special case’. I think she meant to say that we were ‘a special head-case’ because another German government spokesman said later that Ireland would not be granted ‘special status’.
As far as I know, Enda Kenny’s visits to Brussels and Paris in recent days were geared mainly towards getting the new European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to take over the huge debts incurred by Irish banks over the years. He needed Angela Merkel’s support for that. But Ms Merkel flatly rejected that idea last Friday in what appeared to be no uncertain terms. While she said on Sunday that Ireland was ‘a special case’, she did not withdraw her Friday statement, which leaves me completely in the dark as to what she is going to do for us.
Now if she said on Sunday that she was talking through her hat on Friday and that Ireland would indeed get substantial relief for its debt, I would have been very happy. I would have understood if she said, “Look, there was an element of drink involved in my Friday statement. I had one or two schnapps too many on Friday. You know how it is. I got a bit cranky with all the meetings I had to attend in Brussels and all the prime ministers begging me to bail them out. I should not have said what I said but that stuff came out at the end of a very busy week. Of course the ESM will bear the burden of any debts incurred by the banks over the years and into the future.”
We all know Angela Merkel will not say any such thing. She is first and foremost a politician and a very successful one at that. Her party is her priority and, for that reason, she keeps a close eye on the German electorate. They don’t see why they should carry the can for profligate Irish, Spanish or Greek banks. That is the view that is going to have a far greater influence on her thinking than any arguments put forward by Enda Kenny, despite the special relationship that we are told exists between them.
So she and Enda came up with this joint communiqué about Ireland being ‘a special case’. That’s politics for you. It keeps everybody happy even though it means nothing and it keeps government spin doctors in their jobs.
Right on cue, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin accuses the two parties in power in Northern Ireland of putting party interests ahead of everything else. Talk of pot calling the kettle black. He might as well say a baker shouldn’t bake bread or a butcher shouldn’t butcher. Looking after party interests is what political parties do. Is it possible that a Fianna Fáil leader doesn’t know that? I might believe that a leader from, say, the Green Party might not put the party first. But it was Fianna Fáil that invented party-first politics in this country. As Angela Merkel demonstrated over the weekend, this is how politics is played all over the world.
Mr Martin said at Bodenstown on Sunday that playing politics and putting their party interests first is a consistent part of Sinn Féin’s ideology, something they saw every day in the Dáil.
If you were an alien from Mars who had come down here in the last shower of rain, you might take Micheál Martin seriously. You might think that playing party politics was something not done in polite society and that only those blackguards in Sinn Féin would indulge in such disgusting behaviour. Fianna Fáil would always put the good of the country before party interests.
I am not so cynical as to suggest that Micheál Martin was doing what he was condemning, playing party politics.
Finally, you might think I would be the last person to welcome anything that might come out of Phil Hogan’s office. Well, you might be wrong there. I welcome Big Phil’s decision to remove from local councillors the right to go against expert planning advice and allow houses to be built almost anywhere.
I am not too sure about his decision to abolish town councils. Local democracy works best when it is local and the more local it is the better. However, perhaps this is a luxury we cannot afford at present. I think I would prefer if it were possible to suspend those councils and restore them when times are better in the future.
However, whenever I travel around my own county and through other counties on the western seaboard and see how our countryside has been destroyed by a proliferation of houses that should not have been built where they were built, my blood boils.
Councillors abused the power they had to ignore expert advice and voted to have monstrosities and other bungalows built in some of the most beautiful parts of the country without a care for proper planning.
Thank God and Phil Hogan that that day appears to be gone. Or is that too much to hope for? Like everything else this Government’s promises.