Political leaders can’t talk the talk without walking the walk

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

Taxes are for little people”; the phrase is attributed to the mega-rich American hotelier Leona Helmsley – whose family also owned the Empire State Building – who was convicted in the late 1980s for evading tax.

But that quote has since come to describe a concept – namely the contradictory phenomenon that those who make the laws often think that they apply to everybody else except themselves.

There have been countless examples during my reporting lifetime of politicians laying down the rules for everybody else and then blithely ignoring them themselves.

And Golfgate is just the latest.

I don’t think the 82 people who were there deliberately set out to break the restrictions in relation to Covid-19. But they did.

Ignorance of the law is no defence. Even, as they put it, if they inadvertently broke the guidelines, that was not good enough. This was not just a party of regular people getting together for an event without thinking the guidelines through.

This group contained a senior Government minister, an EU commissioner, a judge of the Supreme Court, a famous broadcaster, plus a host of parliamentarians, past and present.

Of all people, these should lead by example. If they are expecting you and me to abide by the rules, they need to be punctilious themselves in complying with them fully.

The rules in relation to indoor gatherings has an upper limit of 50. What some hotels have done is they have partitioned rooms to accommodate larger group, ensuring there are no more than 50 in each room including staff.

You can understand why that has been done. Hotels were flattened by the first coronavirus outbreak. For many, functions and weddings are a core part of the business.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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