Britannia Radio

Going south

KEVIN MYERS

20 NOVEMBER 2010

Pity the nation whose politicians make Gerry Adams look like an attractive option

The moral nadir of any state must surely have come when Mr Gerry Adams MP announces that he is its white knight. Yes, this IRA butcher and architect of countless bombings and killings is abandoning Northern Ireland politics, and even his empty seat in Westminster, to stand in Ireland’s general election next year. He actually thinks that he is entitled to berate the politicians of the Irish Republic for their conduct.

And by God, he could well have a point. Just look at the latest nugget to emerge from the parliamentary sewer that is Leinster House — the equivalent of the Palace of Westminster. James McDaid, a retiring politician on the government side, twice previously achieved national distinction: once for lifting an IRA gunman on to his shoulders to celebrate his having escaped extradition to Britain, and once for drunkenly driving in the wrong direction ten miles up a motorway. (Yes, his ministerial career survived the IRA celebrations, and no, he was not jailed for his motorway escapades.) This fine fellow is in the headlines because of his retirement package of €250,000 tax free, plus an annual pension of €75,000.

McDaid is a member of Fianna Fail, a political tribe that has no equivalent in Britain — well, not since the Highland Clearances; and as the depravity and vainglory of clan-based Irish politics become more luridly evident, one can see that (without applauding Culloden and its aftermath) maybe Cumberland had a point. Fianna Fail’s culture has brought the Republic to the point of ruin unprecedented in Europe since the Weimar Republic defaulted on war reparations in 1930. The Irish government’s borrowings were €80 billion (as of last weekend: who knows today?), which is nearly €25,000 for every man, woman and child in the state. But the government is frantically adding millions to that figure every week, in order to maintain outgoings on a public sector of which the grisly McDaid is merely the latest caricature.

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