Republican News · Thursday 24 January 2002

Government is a fallible business

BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN

The PDs were supposed to be the party of high moral standards. Now they are the party of power for its own sake

Look up, the government really are watching you. Only this time they are only flying by, avoiding the niggling traffic delays you and I must confront daily. They can avoid the problems that their flawed planning policies have inflicted on the rest of us.

So Mary Harney spent another week in the manure business. It has not been the first time in her term of office in this coalition government. This time, the Enterprise Trade and Investment minister was in the muck over her use of a fishery protection aircraft to fly to Leitrim and open an off licence.

In the last two years, Harney has apologised for her role in supporting the nomination of disgraced judge Hugh O'Flaherty to the European Investment Bank (EIB) without consulting all of her parliamentary colleagues, even though there are fairly few of them. Before that were Harney's inappropriate comments on the guilt of Charlie Haughey that have led to the postponement of a court case against him for obstructing the work of the McCracken Tribunal. Then there was her apology for intervening again in the EIB job to ask Fine Gael's Jim Mitchell if he was interested after her multimillionaire friend Ulick McEvaddy proposed the idea to her.

The Harney trip and these past events highlight other issues that the media have overlooked. It shows not just a golden circle of rich friends and enjoyment of the trappings of power and political office but also the abandonment by the Progressive Democrats of the one ideological thing that supposedly differentiated them from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They were supposed to be the party of high moral standards. Now they are the party of power for its own sake.

Harney's use of government aircraft for flying around the state shows up some interesting things about the PDs and their cabinet colleagues today.

For example, if you look at some of the trips taken by Harney, Ahern and other cabinet members, they have a common theme. Many of them are over national routes that are plagued with traffic chaos and long delays because of years of government neglect. Harney travelled from Dublin to Cork, Dublin to Sligo, Waterford and Galway all routes with serious tailbacks and bottlenecks.

Now this week Harney is assembling her dream team of new candidates for the coming Leinster House elections including the IFA's Tom Parlon and new PD President in waiting Michael McDowell.

In February 1897, the PDs won 14 seats in Leinster House, having used opinion polls to target middle class voters disgruntled by the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael dynamic. Ever since then, they have been clinging on to this same constituency, implementing policies that favour them and appeal to their individualistic 'I'm all right jack' ideology.

This has not just been nice tax breaks but deliberately anti-poor policies, forcing welfare recipients into low wage dead end jobs without offering them real training opportunities to enter the higher skilled and much higher income brackets that PD voters reside in.

Today, there is not much on policies from this party, just a huge desire to stay in office and hold onto political power. This it seems is the real defining feature of the Progressive Democrats in the 21st century. Stay in government, cut taxes for the rich and never forget to say sorry because as Harney said herself, "government is a fallible business". If that fails, there is her other pearl of wisdom uttered in the summer of 2000: "Three or four months from now, will anybody remember this?"

The Apologies of Mary Harney

"I understand the concern that's been expressed and I'm sorry... It was a mistake... You get some things right and some things wrong."

Mary Harney, 18 January 2002, apologising for using a government aeroplane to fly to the opening of an off licence in Leitrim.

 

"I'm sorry about a number of things... We got it wrong. I think the reason we made the wrong decision was the procedures we used."

10 September 2000, apologising for supporting the nomination of disgraced judge Hugh O'Flaherty to a £147,000 a year job in the European Investment Bank (EIB).

 

"This is a decision that we got wrong, a mistake we made."

10 September 2000, apologising after it was disclosed that millionaire Ulick McEvaddy had suggested Fine Gael's Jim Mitchell to Harney as a candidate for the EIB job. Harney approached Mitchell, who wasn't interested in the nomination. Mary Harney had holidayed the previous year in McEvaddy's French holiday villa with Fianna Fáil Finance minister Charlie McCreevy.

 

"I am not saying that I do everything right, that I don't make mistakes."

28 June 2000, Harney responding to the debacle over comments about O'Flaherty and her potentially prejudicial comments on Charlie Haughey's alleged obstruction of the McCracken tribunal.

 

"I did not envisage the sense of public outrage. I accept that may have been a mistake... I made a political judgment."

24 May 2000, another apology for supporting the nomination of disgraced judge Hugh O'Flaherty to the European Investment Bank.

 

"I would predict that three or four months from now, will anybody remember this?"

Mary Harney in the summer of 2000.