Breaking: pot calls the kettle black

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

A Fianna Fáil lackey was in touch with Bradley Bytes to moan about Fine Gael ministers appointing party ‘apparatchiks’ to State and other boards.

He gave the example of former Fine Gael Galway West TD, the retired, Pádraig McCormack, being appointed to serve on Galway Harbour Board.

The appointment was rubberstamped by Minister for Transport, Leo Varadkar, supposedly the fresh face of Fine Gael and the antithesis of Fianna Fáil stroke politics . . . until he got into power.

Of course McCormack, having served Galway as a TD for years, has expertise and experience that would be suitable for the harbour role, and who can say he wasn’t the best candidate for it?

It’s true, too, that FG could be accused of rewarding party loyalty with this and scores of other appointments of party supporters to boards.

But, Fianna Fáil, the party who invented the practice of back-scratching, is hardly in a position to complain, now are they?

And since when did they crawl out of the rock of shame, where they belong since they bankrupted the country, to take over the moral high ground?

If only we had pure ministers, with consciences, like the Green Party’s, who made appointments on merit, rather than political brown nosing.

Oh, no, that’s right, the Greens were just as bad as soon as they got a whiff of power – sure how else would former city mayor Níall Ó Brolcháin have gotten a seat in the Seanad?

Labour then, they’re honest and pure and out for the working man, yeah?

Nope, scratch beneath the holier than thou veneer and you’ll find the Comrades are just as handy at feathering supporters’ nests as well.

And if and when Sinn Féin gets into a position of power in the Republic, people, they’ll be stuffing state boards with their Provo buddies, too.

Rewards for party loyalty in Irish politics – it was ever thus. 

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.