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Bertie’s Ireland
By Joe Horgan
In the same, strange way that any country after a length of time becomes identified by association with its leaders — see Thatcher’s Britain, Blair’s Britain, Bush’s America — Bertie Ahern is now some seven years the Taoiseach of Ireland.
This new Ireland is Bertie’s Ireland. Unavoidably, Bertie Ahern’s personality has become tied up in the kind of Ireland we now have.
Is he the ordinary, pint of plain, Dub he portrays himself as or the most skilful, the most devious, the most cunning of them all?
As the man presiding over the hectic changes taking place in this country, the figure of Bertie Ahern, the image of Bertie Ahern, carry a national significance.
So when he announces, as he recently did, that “I am one of the few socialists left in Irish politics,” it is worth reflecting upon.
Many may argue that it is just worth laughing at, but we can laugh later. When the leader of a government that has often been characterised as the most right wing in the history of the Irish state suddenly declares his left wing leanings there is bound to be something of a stir.
What he actually meant by claiming to be a socialist seems harder to define. Seeing the way he has presided over the development of an Ireland more inequitable than ever before, more in hock to big businesses, more intent on enriching the few, more ringed by an elitist coterie, perhaps it was an Eastern European-style oligarchy he had in mind when he thought of socialism.
Perhaps when, in response to the drubbing they took in local and European elections in the summer, Fianna Fáil publicly tried to reposition itself as more caring, he just thought saying he was a socialist would do.
Indeed it is hard to see just what depth his pronouncement is supposed to have had. For all those people suffering at the hands of a ludicrously under-funded health service or watching as another developer is enriched at the expense of their town or village, Bertie Ahern’s assertion of equality is eye-opening.
“What is the best form of equality?” he asked.
“It is the fact that the richest family in this area can go on a Sunday afternoon to the Botanical Gardens and the poorest family can too. And they can both share the same things. So I have fought for 15 years to improve the resources of things like that, the Phoenix Park, Dublin Zoo and also things like sport.”
So a fairer, more equal society is not one where rich families or poor families get the same chance at education, the same treatment in health, the same opportunities in life, but one where they can all have the same access to the Botanical Gardens and the Phoenix Park. Workers of Ireland unite, throw off your chains and admission to the zoo shall be free.
So we shouldn’t mention, then, the fact that this government has managed to create an Ireland that is the most expensive in Europe in which to live but simultaneously acts as a tax haven for those wealthy enough to avail of it.
That is that there is no tax relief in the cost of living, but there is if you are involved in development that can be bracketed under urban renewal, rural renewal, construction of car parks or the professional breeding of racehorses.
Likewise this government halved the tax to be paid on the selling of property investments or shares and, as you may well notice if you travel around Ireland now and see the new nursing homes popping up alongside every village and town, allowed the tax involved in the construction of such facilities to be written off.
Meanwhile, admission charges to accident and emergency departments have risen from being free to ¤45 with the overall cost of hospital services rising by over 11 per cent.
Water charges have increased, electricity costs have risen and petrol prices continue to rise, with over half of the cost now going to the government.
VAT, which pushes those exorbitant Irish prices further and further through the roof, continues to bring in enormous revenue for the state. So the picture that arises in the structure of the state finances is one where the cost of living for all is extremely high, but where a wealthy few can create spaces for their capital to flourish and grow.
In other words, one where the poor are, in effect, getting poorer and the rich getting richer. It kind of puts equal access to the zoo in context.
Yet it is clear that Bertie Ahern’s government has felt a public disapproval in the way in which it is perceived as being so far in favour of the wealthy. It is now suggested that they may reverse what became known last year as the ‘savage 16’ cuts in welfare provisions.
In response to a perceived downturn in the economy the government responded, as so many do, by clawing money back from those who could least afford it under the guise of reining in a sprawling benefits system.
It would seem an odd course of action from someone claiming to believe in a fairer society to react to a cold economic climate by taking from those who already have the least instead of those who develop property, invest in shares, breed racehorses and avail not of welfare cheques but tax-breaks.
Indeed, it is not much of a sign of a new sense of caring to suddenly seek to give back what was so heartlessly taken from those who could least afford it and it is not much of a compensation to say to those in inner city Dublin that they still had access to the Botanical Gardens.
Bertie Ahern said as part of his new defining of himself and his government that he ‘believes in being an inclusive person.’
As he sits at the head of an Ireland ever widening the gap between those with the least and those with the most, does he really believe that us all being able to walk in the park together is the best he can do?
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