Creative with the truth? Mick’s not the first

I DON’T know the Wexford TD, Mick Wallace, and I don’t know if I would even vote for him if I lived in Wexford. All I know about him is what I read in the papers and what I hear on radio and television.

He has admitted knowingly making false VAT returns to the Revenue Commissioners and there is pressure on him to resign his seat. Most of that pressure is coming from fellow TDs and wannabe TDs who are jealous because he took the seat they were expecting to take in Wexford.

 

Nobody is condoning what Mick Wallace did.  He lied to the Revenue Commissioners. So what’s new? Is he the first TD not to tell the truth? You know my views on politicians and the truth.

Mick Wallace was one of the big stories of the last election. He came out of the blue, you might say. He had never fought an election before and he only decided to run a few weeks before polling day in February 2011. But he got a remarkable 13,329 first-preference votes and topped the poll. He beat veteran TDs like Brendan Howlin of Labour, John Browne of Fianna Fáil and Liam Twomey and Paul Kehoe of Fine Gael into second, third, fourth and fifth places respectively.  His vote prevented Fine Gael from getting three seats and stopped Fianna Fáil and Labour from getting two seats.

So there is a lot of resentment out there against Mick Wallace. Since he was elected, he has shown himself to be a controversial TD with a lot of off-beat views on many subjects. He dresses very casually and has a penchant for pink shirts which he wears in the Dáil chamber. That, as much as any of his views, makes him stand out. He says his hobbies are football, food, wine and good company (in no particular order). Sounds like a guy I would like.

I got a lot of this information from the excellent manual, Election 2011, published by RTÉ’s The Week in Politics programme.

Wallace managed five U-18 Wexford Youths football teams to All-Ireland titles. He says Charles Stewart Parnell is the politician he most admires. His priority as a TD is to change the political system and he feels a responsibility to work towards a fairer society.

He has probably found out by now there is very little he can do as an Independent TD to change the system or bring about a fairer society. But there is no harm in trying.

Still, he sounds like a TD that I would like to get to know and on my next visit to Leinster House, I must seek him out and hope he finds time to meet me. I think I would enjoy his company over a glass or wine or a cup of coffee in the Dáil bar.

It was the voters of Wexford – or a sizeable number of them – who elected Mick Wallace to the Dáil and it is up to them, or should be up to them, to decide whether or not he continues to represent them. Mick Wallace himself, of course, also has a say in this matter.

I believe Dáil Éireann and the people of this State need people like Mick Wallace. He has things to say, which you might or might not agree with; he is colourful and he is different.

In my long years covering Dáil proceedings for The Irish Independent, I found it was such a stuffy place that you could die of boredom there. It seems, in contrast, the present Dáil has a fair share of colourful and different characters to ensure there will never be another dull moment there.

Our own constituency of Clare elected some great politicians over the years and I do not need to mention Daniel O’Connell or Eamon de Valera. Clare also produced some great characters and colourful TDs to sit in the Dáil.

There was Brian O’Higgins, who represented West Clare in the early days of the Dáil. He produced some beautiful and cheap Christmas cards with unique celtic designs, which were very popular all over Ireland when I was young.

Older readers will remember Tom Burke the Bonesetter. Councillor Christy Burke of Miltown Malbay has promised to help me research the life of this very talented man who represented Clare in the Dáil more than 60 years ago.

Then there was the Fine Gael TD, big Bill Murphy from Ennistymon, who was said to be the longest Bill to go through the House.

In my own time as a reporter in Leinster House, there was Dr Bill Loughnane of Feakle, one of the most colourful of deputies to grace that establishment with their presence. I covered his election campaign for the Indo when he canvassed every public house from Killaloe to Feakle and from Feakle to Newmarket-on-Fergus on Whit weekend 1981. Back in the early 1970s, I saw him entertain a group of foreign visitors to Leinster House with his rendition of The Bucks of Oranmore on the fiddle, to the horror of security and protocol personnel in the main hall
Then there was Dr Moosajee Bhamjee who served in the Dáil from 1992 until he retired prematurely in

1997 due to frustration with the system. You couldn’t find a more colourful deputy than Bhamjee.
There were others from other constituencies, people who didn’t take themselves too seriously and who could never be accused of pomposity, a fairly common trait among certain politicians.

Mick Wallace did wrong.  Hands up those who didn’t. But calling him “a tax cheat” is a bit rich coming from politicians who cheated us at the last election.

If he should resign from the Dáil then the Government itself should go.