Because, over the past decade or so, I have written so often about this society's indifference towards men in difficulty, I get many letters from men struggling with this toxic culture. Usually I respond that, unfortunately, there is nothing I can do; the circumstances described are all too familiar; I have outlined similar cases previously to no effect; and nowadays I write sparingly on these issues for reasons of professional prudence, writes John Waters
Occasionally, I receive accounts that drive me crazy enough to abandon my resolutions: a description of an especially despicable family court judge, perhaps, or an account of an encounter with the Celtic Kafkaesque that puts Kafka in the shade.
A couple of weeks back, I got a letter from a man from Marino, whose story engaged me for different reasons. Call him Harry. A constituent of the Taoiseach, he enclosed a copy of a recent letter he sent to Bertie Ahern, seeking help.
Harry is 53, divorced, and, at present, not working due to illness. He receives weekly a €185 social welfare payment plus €67 rent allowance.
Since this is nowhere near enough to pay for accommodation, Harry is homeless. He has been on a housing list for the past three years. His marriage ended in 1996, but he was not registered for the housing list at that time because, technically, he owned half a house. This property was occupied by his ex-wife and daughters and therefore of no use to Harry. The authorities explained that the State's priorities are families and women with children.
In his letter to An Taoiseach, Harry described how he is "tormented on a regular basis" by people in his local social welfare clinic demanding more information. "I own nothing. I have never claimed anything in my life. I've worked hard, too hard. That's why my back is worn out".
Harry did not get to see An Taoiseach. A secretary told him there was nothing Ahern could do for him, and with reluctance agreed to take his name. "I know you are a busy man, Taoiseach, and I know you are a good man," Harry wrote. "I shake your hand regularly at 7.30 Mass in Gardiner Street Church. Please, can you see me some time in the future? Please."
There is a trite point to be made here by way of contrasting the situation outlined by Harry and the infamously self-styled poverty-stricken circumstances of Bertie Ahern. But I do not intend to make it. I would like instead to draw attention to the genuine similarities between the life experiences of these two men.
Ahern's marriage, like Harry's, ended in the 1990s, and this misfortune unleashed, by his own account, a series of events that dog him to this day.
None of the matters concerning his personal finances that have preoccupied the public conversation this past year would have occurred, he himself asserts, if his marriage had not ended.
But strangely, despite this assertion and its plausibility, Ahern has made no effort to advance a political argument to embrace the more general injustices his own circumstances have revealed.
Although he has complained about his own situation, and ill-advisedly continues to do so in increasingly melodramatic language, he has not once complained about the wider context. He has not said that the situation of divorced or separated men is something we need to think about. He has not made any reference to the possibility that he or his Government might do anything about this. Nor have any of his Ministers taken up the subject, not even to ask if it is right that a man who has worked for many years to provide for his family should be reduced to begging because the State does not regard the welfare of men as urgent business.
That a senior politician, with real power, can directly experience such a profound series of injustices and still be unable to feel empathy towards fellow sufferers tells us, fundamentally, that politics is impotent, that clientelism does not work, that personal experience is of no political value when its narrative runs against the grain of ideological consensus.
Bertie Ahern may be the most powerful politician in Ireland, but his decade of inaction on foot of his own experience of the inequity of this society tells us that he has power only to do what the ideologues tell him to. His celebrated talent for human connection has no use or purpose if the help being sought does not come under an approved category. He is a prisoner of the system and the culture that supports it.
It is unsurprising, therefore, that he complains so plaintively. For what he is saying, really, is this: "I have done everything you asked. I have helped to create a culture in accordance with your wishes. I have suffered personally as a consequence of this culture and have not sought to dilute it. I have sold out other men. In return I have asked only that you allow me to feather my own retirement a little as compensation for the pain I have suffered in delivering what you demanded. Can I not have even that? Please"