The stench of sanctimony and superiority pervade the air – but thank Gormley there's no incinerator, writes SARAH CAREY
I’M UTTERLY ambivalent about the issue of stag hunting. I think riders should be capable of tearing across fields and leaping over ditches without having to pursue an animal, but I can’t work myself into a lather of tearful outrage for said animal. This is due to my agricultural upbringing, which taught us the Hobbesian reality that for beasts, not to mention many humans, life is nasty, brutish and short.
But if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s the stench of sanctimony. It’s one of the reasons I regard the Greens with contempt. The moral superiority reeking from Gormley would nearly drive you to saddle up a nag, bellow “Tally-ho!” and head off with the hounds. Fortunately, my evolution as a complete crank is in the early stages and I can hold back.
But I won’t hold back on calling out the Greens as they defiantly convince themselves that theirs is a righteous path. We all know what this legislation is really about. I’m sure Minister Gormley has the deepest sympathy for the stags whom we are told are “stressed” after being hunted. I’ve no doubt they are, just as horses being whipped around the Grand National course probably feel out of their comfort zone too.
But this legislation has less to do with Gormley’s deep conviction that stag hunting should be banned – and more to do with his even deeper compulsion to justify his party’s presence in government.
The Greens can tell themselves whatever they want, but nothing will ever change the fact that when Trevor Sargent said he would resign the party leadership rather than enter coalition with Fianna Fáil, it meant he was against coalition with the Soldiers. It did not mean he would use every political skill at his disposal to persuade his reluctant members into such a coalition.
All this marginal nonsense of stag hunting, puppy farms and Poolbeg is about wrapping Green Ministers in a blanket of martyrdom to comfort them when they lose their seats in the next election. I won’t be buying it though.
As Stephen Collins argued in this paper on Saturday, Gormley’s behaviour as Minister for the Environment in preventing the building of the incinerator at Poolbeg is truly disgraceful. He’s a jumped-up Nimby in the process of costing the State millions in environmental fines by the EU because we continue to use landfill for rubbish disposal.
The Minister also cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of euro when he refused to grant the Ward Union Hunt a licence, resulting in a court case which the State lost. This sort of thing will keep him straight with animal rights activists and constituents of Dublin South East who’d wished their rubbish was tipped in Kildare rather than burned across the bay.
Meanwhile, anyone who understands anything about the banking crisis looks back in despair at the critical path of truly disastrous decision-making by the Government. The Greens might save the residents of south Dublin from imaginary poisoning or the stags from the chase, but nothing can save us the billions this Government’s bad decisions have cost us.
Gormley might pray that his niche legislation will compensate for the Greens’ part in the wrecking of our economy, but it won’t prevent their TDs from being hunted out of office.
Various narratives have been offered up for the banking crisis. One was the “Lehmans! Lehmans!” story. It ran that if it weren’t for the collapse of Lehman Brothers, everything would’ve been fine. Another was that the crisis was all about liquidity. If the banks could only have borrowed the money they needed, we’d have avoided the worst. As the recent banking reports have revealed, both of these stories are nonsense, and the seeds really go back to 2002. That election result was disastrous enough for the country, but even in 2007 we had options.
As that Government settled in and the thrill of power coursed through the veins of excited Green Party ministers, we still had choices.
For example, Joan Burton – who has been asking all the right questions – has repeatedly asked Brian Cowen about March and April of 2008, when the Anglo share price collapsed. This was the time when Seán Quinn’s position was unravelling and back-to-back loans were propping up the bank – allegedly at the behest of the regulator. Cowen was on a St Patrick’s Day tour of Malaysia.
Even then, if someone had paid attention, something could have been done both for Anglo and the Quinn Group. But they weren’t, and it wasn’t. So by the time we got to the drama of September 28th, 2008, all we were left with was a range of horrible choices. The guarantee seemed like a good idea, but even then we got it wrong by including existing senior debt and subordinated debt.
If at any stage over the previous 12 months, just one better decision had been made, we might have been spared the worst of this. I’m not saying the crisis wouldn’t have happened – but there were steps that could have been taken that would have saved us a few billion here and there.
Instead, we had the worst possible government at the worst possible time. For that, we can thank Fianna Fáil and the Green Party who put them back into power. Actually, if anyone’s up for chasing Greens across the countryside, I’d sign up for that.