As the political system is lambasted, the FG deputy can't be accused of toeing the party line, writes MIRIAM LORDin Glenties
SEVEN DAYS spent stewing in your own shortcomings might not immediately spring to mind as a nice way to enjoy a July break.
But they’re loving every minute of it in Glenties. Nothing like some self-flagellation in Donegal to purify the soul. How, oh how, did we get ourselves into this awful state?
But there’s only a small bit of breast beating, because the real whipping boys at the MacGill Summer School this year are our politicians, and those of the Government variety in particular.
As might be expected, the politicians are gently savaging each other. This is usually done along party lines, but yesterday we had the added bonus of a Fine Gael deputy attacking her own.
Lucinda Creighton steamed into town, lit a fuse under the party leadership (or rather, made sure the one she’s been tending since last month’s failed heave is still fizzing) and then breezed out again.
She’s off on holiday to France today after a productive couple of weeks sniping from the resprung grass at Enda Kenny.
Wasn’t it very fortunate that the story of the FG golf fundraiser and the Nama developer broke just in time for MacGill? Thankfully, it meant Creighton was available to move swiftly to the microphones and moral ground outside the Highlands Hotel, there to outline her complete opposition to “inappropriate” party donations from Nama developers.
Her colleague Leo Varadkar addresses the gathering this afternoon. Will he play it safe, now that he is back on the front bench or take a leaf from Lucinda’s book and distance himself from the current ruling regime? There’s nothing to be gained, as far as the summer school sages are concerned, from cultivating the traditional way of doing politics in Ireland. In the main their audience agrees.
There is scant forgiveness on offer in Glenties this week. There is a lot of polite anger too.
The general consensus from speakers is that our political leaders are primarily to blame for the mess the country finds itself in. But the voting public hasn’t covered itself in glory either, if the regular dressing downs from the platform in the first two days are anything to go by.
Who put these people in power in the first place? What are we like? Apparently it’s the national weakness for cute hoors and parish pumpery that has us the way we are now.
If only we could solve our problems with A Strongly Worded Paper. There’s no shortage of them on offer.
Over 60 speakers will have given their considered opinion on the state of the nation by the end of this marathon bout of navel gazing. The days are long. There is a lot of talk. Most of it seems to make sense, but when did that ever figure in Irish politics?
Garret FitzGerald, opened the school on Sunday, firing the first pot shots at the electorate for voting in people who are benignly viewed as rogues. He finally took his leave of the village yesterday afternoon.
Garret has been having a ball, contributing at the end of all the sessions, not to mention having his photograph in all the newspapers wearing a wonderfully co-ordinated shirt, tie and sweater in an array of fuschia and pink pastels.
“My daughter bought them in Penneys – only €20 the lot!” boasted Dr FitzGerald to everyone who complimented him on his outfit. He’s working on two books at the moment. The first is a revised edition of his memoirs and the second is about the Irish education system in 1824.
He promises it’ll be a thumping good read.
The stream of speakers is never ending. Joe Mulholland, the man behind the event, marvels at the ability of the media to absorb all the verbiage.
“I’m shovelling stuff at them at a terrific rate. I don’t know how they’re coping with all the speeches.” Most weren’t, but thanks to Lucinda, they didn’t really have to for most of yesterday.
There isn’t a hotel or BB room to be had in Glenties – even the bats who used to dive-bomb guests during the evening sessions appear to have been billeted out of town for the duration.
Meanwhile, lest anybody accuse the organisers of overloading the mind and neglecting the body, Mulholland has taken to organising a bus to nearby Portnoo Strand every morning so people can go for a swim.
Yesterday, as they braved the water, they could concentrate on what they heard the previous night when Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said nothing much about the need for higher standards of leadership and governance. Pat Cox did that for him, with the assistance of lecturer Ailbhe O’Neill and Fine Gael’s Phil Hogan. Phil’s contribution about his party’s commitment to introducing a “New Politics” wasn’t much to write home about either.
Lucinda certainly wasn’t impressed. “We need a real New Politics of substance, rather than sound-bites,” she declared yesterday.
Pat Cox observed that the Irish seem to have missed out on the accountability gene. As he sees it, we also talk a great game, but don’t deliver. We are heavy on rhetoric, but little else. As he put it, we specialise in “world-class analysis followed by world-class inertia”.
Meanwhile, Martin had to take any compliment that came his way, no matter how backhanded. One speaker from the floor described him as “the decent face of Fianna Fáil”. Micheál’s line that the Government can’t be blamed for the economic meltdown because everyone else was egging them on at the time didn’t go down well in the hall.
He blustered about the issues being very complex.
Pat Cox nearly burst. “Complexity? If you want it let’s go toe to toe!”
Hooray! But they didn’t.
Yesterday morning Prof Brigid Laffan of UCD demolished the Minister’s line of argument. “You can’t have responsibility and be in Government and blame the Opposition because they didn’t tell you.”
The discussion is good in Glenties. But what we have is a group of interested people preaching to the politically converted. One attendee proudly described the summer school as the “real Seanad”. Another began his contribution with: “It’s a question I put to Mary Harney when she formed the PDs . . .” Another described the audience as a “congregation”. Pat Rabbitte was one of last night’s headliners. Michael McDowell is in today. The congregation is in heaven.