Side doors distract from the important

Michael Noonan could have done with a Dermot O'Leary on Friday night. If a sympathetic member of the RTÉ Authority could have arranged for him to have been slipped through a side door at RTÉ to avoid that miserable performance on The Late Late Show, it would have been a kindness. It would also have been a kindness for someone to have assisted Ruairí Quinn to slip through a side door to avoid the debacle with Gerry Adams.

It is a mark of the frivolity of our politics that such a deal is made of Dermot O'Leary arranging for Liam and Hazel Lawlor slip through a side door at Dublin airport to avoid a scrum of photographers. Why shouldn't people in distressing circumstances, irrespective of how those circumstances came about, be helped to minimise their distress, when no significant interest is compromised? There will be the usual fake uproar about this when the Dáil gets around to resuming after its five-week Christmas break. As though the side-door episode matters one iota.

OK, it matters one iota but what about the issues which matter lots and lots of iotas which hardly ever get mentioned in our parliament? Over the last 10 years, every single budget has benefited the rich more than the poor. This includes the five budgets for which Labour had responsibility when it was in power from 1992 to 1997, including the three budgets of Ruairí Quinn. Does this not matter, does it not deserve some attention, even a spat at the order of business some day? The problem is of course, who would dare raise it?

The Garda's latest crime report betrays the usual bias on crime, omitting reference even to most of the crimes committed by the rich? Does this not matter? Have the revelations on Ansbacher, massive tax frauds, bank frauds and crimes under the Companies Acts had no impact on the political psyche, such as to move the Garda to even make mention of this mega-crime phenomenon, even if they do almost damn all about it? (And, incidentally, how is it that the Garda cannot get its act together sufficiently to publish its annual report at least within a year? Why could it not be done within three months, so that we would have relevant statistics?)

Would a parliamentary debate on the structural unfairness in the educational and health services (how, again, the rich benefit most) be out of the question and, to push it a bit, how about an Oireachtas committee inquiry? The provision of accommodation for thousands of Travellers might engage the attention of our law-makers and some of them might consider it marginally more important than side doors at Dublin airport.

The provision of elementary conditions in mental hospitals might also engage a few of them or maybe decent arrangements for the few thousand refugees who have come here. Or there might be a debate about homelessness or on house prices (even though they have eased they are still outside the reach of most young couples) or about road deaths or Northern Ireland policing.

And how about a debate about the millions of euros to be spent in the coming general election by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour and what this will do to our political system, how it will further bias it in favour of those who can afford to contribute against the interests of those who cannot? Isn't it extraordinary that we are about to sleepwalk into another scandal, with debate over only how we walk into it - Fine Gael wants to raise money from the rich just as much as Fianna Fáil does but wants to get it in one way (from private bank accounts) rather than another (from corporate bank accounts)?

Then there is the the slaughter of innocents in Afghanistan, a slaughter which is undertaken with our approval and certainly without our protest. Wouldn't you think that parliamentarians, so exercised about our moral stance on neutrality, might have something to say about the bombardment of a poor country over a period of over three months?

That those who for so long told us, in the context of Northern Ireland, that no cause justified the taking of a single innocent human life, might have something to say about the taking of thousands of innocent human lives? That those who instituted a national day of mourning to mark the slaughter by terrorists of 3,000 innocent people in America on September 11th might suggest even a minute's silence for the many more thousands slaughtered in Afghanistan by American bombers?

No, the side doors at Dublin airport will dominate the resumed Dáil, with the willing collaboration of an excited media and anything that matters will be left to the pinkoes, soreheads and whingers.

Last week I drew an equivalence between the chaos, horror and grief rained down by German bombers on the people of Guernica in 1937, as depicted by Picasso in his famous painting, and the chaos, horror and grief rained down by American bombers on Afghanistan in 2001, evoked again a torrent of e-mails (over 200). Almost all from America and, again, almost all abusive.

Just three points I want to respond to: no, concern for the killing of innocents in Afghanistan does not imply a lack of concern for the killing of innocents in America on September 11th; the equivalence drawn was not between the morality of the two bombing exercises; the Germans targeted civilians, the Americans did not but knew that civilians would be killed, it was an equivalence of suffering and terror that was being alluded to; yes, I got the museum wrong - Guernica is in the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, not, as I wrote, in the Museo del Prado.