Blame voters for our political standards Ð not politicians

Date Published: {J}

I have never voted for an election candidate on the basis that I’d love him or her to show up at my funeral; I’ve never hoped I’d meet one at a Galway match and I’ve never tried to get a medical card or planning permission from one when the powers that be told me I wasn’t entitled to one.

I’ve never voted for a politician because I knew them, went to school with them, went out with their cousin or because they once bought me a pint in a pub.

To state the bleeding obvious, the only reason to vote for an election candidate is because you think they’re the best person for the job – and that job is to legislate, to look after the collective interest and to govern.

It’s not that I wouldn’t like to have a pint with one of them or that I’d end up sulking if I was sitting beside them at a match – there are many political representatives whose company I’d thoroughly enjoy.

It’s just that we have to move beyond the parish pump, backslapping, back-scratching, palm-greasing, nod-and-a-wink style of politics that has brought us to our knees.

But are the politicians to blame for this – or is it actually our own fault? Do we get the public representatives that we deserve?

Do we place more store in the TD who’s a ‘dacent oul skin’ and stood a pint for everyone when he casually dropped in to the local before the last election, who bought a ticket for the GAA monthly draw for a car, who sent a Christmas card – even if he forgot to actually put your name on it – and had the footpath fixed outside the house?

We loved the fact that Bertie Ahern could be seen out having a few pints in Fagans after a day’s work or that Brian Cowen knew the Lakes of Pontchartrain or that Charlie Haughey dropped into Páidí Ó Sé’s for a pint in Dingle on his way out by yacht to holiday on his private island.

The former Minister and Fine Gael TD for Mayo Paddy Lindsay famously told the story of the last hours of the 1954-57 Coalition, as Ministers returned to Áras an Uachtaráin to hand in their seals of office.

Lindsay, who was then Minister for the Gaeltacht, travelled in a car with the Taoiseach, John A Costello, and the Minister for Agriculture, James Dillon.

As they passed by a historic pub on the quays a discussion ensued about public houses. Dillon said that the only public house he had ever been in belonged to his mother in Ballaghaderreen.

Costello owned up to having been in a pub once, in Terenure, and somebody had tried to poison him with orange juice. Lindsay muttered under his breath "now I know why we’re travelling back to Áras an Uachtaráin."

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.