Pay reform needed – Mitchell

BEING President of Ireland is a big job; if you get it you’re paid more than €6,000 a week, as well as getting a large house and chauffeured car. After you start, you’ll be the second-best paid politician in Europe, behind Nicolas Sarkozy but ahead of Angela Merkel.

Gay Mitchell is one of those applying for the job and in fairness to the Fine Gael candidate, he accepts the need for reform in relation to pay. “I think it is something that should be cut very dramatically. I think it’s going to be and it should be, it’s too much.”
It’s hard to think of the Presidency as being much more than a ceremonial role, given the type of events the President is often seen at. However, Mr Mitchell said its political and constitutional significance should not be forgotten. “The Presidency is very much a political office, not a party political office but a political office because the President is part of the Oireachtas. There are the houses of the Oireachtas, the Dáil and Senate and the president and that makes up our national parliament, the Oireachtas. The person who becomes President needs to be experienced and the president swears on the bible to uphold the Constitution and the law and to pursue the welfare of the people. The President is like a sentry. A Government with a Dáil majority can’t put whatever law they want through the Oireachtas because the attorney general will say ‘you won’t get that by the President’. Presidents have referred 15 laws and seven of them have been found to be unconstitutional,” Mr Mitchell said.
He said Patrick Hillery is something of an under appreciated president, who showed his mettle and integrity when former colleagues tried to use ‘sleveenism’ to get him to refuse Garret Fitzgerald a dissolution of the Dáíl. “I think Dr Hillery is often left out in recent history because Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese were so different. But he re-established the presidency after Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh resigned and when he came under pressure from his own party not to grant dissolution of the Dáil, he had the experience and the integrity not to give into that. I think Dr Hillery deserves more recognition than he gets and in time I think he will get that recognition.”
The day before meeting the candidate, this reporter mentioned him to a person who will almost certainly vote in the election and who follows current affairs. They asked who Gay Mitchell was, which illustrates the problem he has in getting himself known away from his Dublin base. However, he says it won’t be a major problem for him. “I think all the candidates have to get around and meet the people. Of the four candidates, I’m certainly one of the better known. I’ve been a TD for 26 years, Lord Mayor of Dublin, minister for European affairs. For the last seven years I’ve been in Europe so I’ve been absent from adversarial politics but I’ve been to a lot of fairs and fetes and things and recognition is quite high.”
He speaks a lot about the type of values he wants to bring to the office. “First of all, I’d like to continue from where President McAleese is. Everybody said Mary Robinson was a hard act to follow and she was but Mary McAleese has followed her very well. I’ve a sense of direction, I believe we need a framework in this country if we are to be not just prosperous but be happier, which is what the proclamation speaks of, prosperity and happiness.
“That framework is that with every right comes a responsibility and if we want to have social justice we have to encourage the enterprising spirit to create the wealth for public services such as health and social welfare and education, not for someone else, for us all. I very much believe in those pillars -enterprise and social justice, rights and responsibilities. We’re at an important crossroads and that, in my view, is the direction we need to take. I have the experience as TD, councillor, MEP and lord mayor and I have the energy to sustain it over seven years. I have that framework, I have the experience and the energy to sustain a sense of direction over seven years,” he said.
He also said inclusivity is very important to him. “Some people have this politically correct sense of being inclusive, going with the trend of the day. I believe in being really inclusive, there’s a place for people of all religious denominations, atheists, non-believers, black, white; there is a place for everybody and we don’t need to be excluding anyone. I think we’ve got to start thinking in that way, no matter what your father did or what the colour of your skin is, that there’s a place for everybody. We really need to talk about it. I don’t want to cause offence but being inclusive is like being pregnant, you’re either inclusive or not inclusive. I don’t think we have an inclusive society. There’s a new element in society that wants to have what they think is inclusive but it’s a politically correct inclusiveness. Inclusive has to be fully inclusive and that’s one of the things I want to promote. I have a set of beliefs; I try to see things from the point of view of people who don’t share my beliefs and I ask them to try and see my view point.”
Opinion polls in recent weeks would indicate that the Presidency is Michael D Higgins’ to lose but the race won’t really take shape until next month, according to Mr Mitchell.
He says the experience of Adi Roche in the last Presidential election 14 years ago shows how dramatically things can turn. “A poll of 1,091 people in the Sunday Independent gave her the election on 51%. In fact she got less than 7%. The real polls will settle down when we know who all the candidates are, which we will know on the 27th of this month. I would guess about the first 10 days of October, things will settle down. I believe I will get strong cross-party support.
“In Dublin, I always run ahead of the Fine Gael vote and get votes from every party. I will be reaching out to ask people who traditionally vote for other parties, particularly Fianna Fáil people who don’t have a candidate, to look at my track record, look at what I stand for, look at who I am. I think I’m nearest to the sort of candidate they would want as President.”