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Ireland: What Irish Madness is This?
Even though it is summertime and the living is easy, LOOK AROUND IRELAND was more than surprised to see that there was political activity taking place, without much fanfare, during the hibernating season for all politicians.
We do know that this unfortunate animal requires a long period of rest during the hot summer months and will generally not re-appear in public until sometime in October, whereupon there will be so much hot air generated that one wonders with trepidation what effect this will have in accelerating climate change. Could all this huffing and puffing be the cause of all the flooding that occurs regularly on this little island of ours?
Should a tribunal of enquiry be set up to measure the carbon footprint of this beast known as a Teachta Dailaigh, a sometimes deranged version of homo sapiens?
Apologies, I digress from my initial subject. In the quiet of this political slumber, when all the hacks were in foreign shores and drinking quietly in a foreign equivalent of Doheny and Nesbitts, Bertie Ahern was making a quiet little announcement, a mere whisper when compared to normal pronouncements. And what was this little present that he offered?
Well it was quite breathtaking actually. Bertie offered the long suffering and grossly overtaxed motorists a nice pot of €400 million to upgrade the roads. Great! Not before time, we said. The roads are a disaster. All the money is going into motorways under the NDP, and there is no budget at all to improve the minor roads. Potholes are everywhere, and are as much a danger to the motorist and pedestrian as speeding. The ditches of the R roads are no longer cut and, thus, become narrower and more dangerous as the dreaded weed, Ragworth, takes control of the country byways.
But now Bertie was riding to the rescue while the rest of his species snored and farted their way through the Dail summer recess. You see, Bertie is a doer. He gets things done without preamble. Bertie is a multi-tasker that any multinational company would be proud to have on their executive payroll, He can handle lots of things at once in other words. Bertie is also a multi – crisis manager of the highest order. Tribunals enquiring into his financial affairs, the deliberations about his sex life, the colour of his bedroom, his marriage break-up, the renovation money for the house he rented, the Manchester Miracle, a modern day equivalent of the loaves and fishes where sterling changes to dollars and then multiplies to punts, shafting O’Donoghue by making him Ceann Comhairle, stabbing Senate nominees in the back and taking care of Rocco and Jay while Westlife go on tour.
Bertie can do it all, and do it with aplomb. So it was with a faint air of suspicion that LOOK AROUND IRELAND noted the low key announcement of the 400 million euro for upgrading the roads. Normally Bertie has a PR army that would fill Hill 16 surrounding him when he has good news to deliver. Particularly so during the hibernating season – sorry! - the Summer Recess. It is not like our Bert to hide his light under a bushel.
The announcement barely made the regional reports on the RTE News. It was concealed perilously close to the death notices in the Irish Times, the self - styled paper of record.
LOOK AROUND IRELAND looked at the press release and nearly fainted. Was there a typo error here? Had the Microsoft Word gremlins been at work?
The statement said that the 400 million euro was for road improvements in Northern Ireland!
Road improvements in Northern Ireland? LOOk AROUND IRELAND had a very stiff drink and looked at the statement again. No, there it was in black and white. A quick check with our moles at the highest political level confirmed the news. Our government had given 400 million euro to another sovereign state to improve their roads! Had re-unification occurred whilst we slept last night? Was there a referendum we missed? No, no, it was true.
Without as much as a nod to the democratic process that we are supposed to living under, our leader handed over €400 million of our tax money to Ian Paisley and Co. to improve their roads, roads of infinitely better standard than those of the 26 counties.
And there was not a whimper of protest to be heard.
Where was Conor Faughlan of the AA to denounce this act?. Nowhere to be seen. Where was Jimmy Quinn of the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA) , whose members are crucified by road taxes, tolls, permits, fuel taxes etc,.etc. No word from Jimmy either. Too busy with a ploughing championship in Cooley was our Jimmy.
How dare our government throw our hard earned money away in this fashion!
We have the worst road infrastructure in the EU. We have the most miles of road per head of population in all of Europe and beyond. A lot of these are boreens going nowhere. When the government build the roads that we should have had two decades ago they load them with tolls. The M50 is a car park that the same Bertie just gave €680 million to a private company, NTR, to buy back the toll bridge that is on it – in two years!
We are all for the peace process, for sure. But let’s remember that we in the South did not do any of the fighting. This was a bigoted religious war between Catholic and Protestant.
No other name for it.
And whilst Bertie Ahern was instrumental in bringing a peace accord to fruition, and has to be credited for it, along with many other people, we the citizens of the Republic of Ireland that he that he governs in the south did not authorize him to throw our money away to the two bullies in the schoolyard - just because they stopped fighting!
This so called wealthy nation of ours will need every penny it can to keep employment at current levels. Our desperate and under-funded infrastructure is something of which Bertie and his cohorts should be grossly ashamed. No wonder companies will not locate here because of the chronic state of the roads. The same companies might now look at the North partly because of their good roads, greatly improved by our €400 million !
What madness! It is akin to throwing mice into a cheese factory. Bertie, go hibernate for the summer like the rest of your species!
Seamus Maguire
LOOK AROUND IRELAND
12th August 2007
About the Author
John McKeown lives in Ireland.John's work has been used by various organisations in Ireland and the USA. He was invited to the Milwaukee Irish Festival in 2003 to show off Ireland in their Culture Tent. Recently he has teamed up with Michael Londra (lead singer of Riverdance on Broadway) to produce a DVD called Look Around Ireland to the tenor voice of Michael Londra.