Minister warns against politicians pandering to localism and clientelism

The Minister for the Environment has warned of the "dangerous illusion" that unless a national politician panders to localism and clientelism he is not much good.

Mr Noel Dempsey said cynicism was rife and attitudes to politicians and public life were at their lowest ebb. "There is a need for renewal and new approaches."

Pandering to the "safe option" was why the word "politician" was synonymous with everything "tacky and toxic" - and local in a way that damaged and trivialised one's locality.

He said that if politicians were moved away from a "craven focus on the parish pump" there could be more of the rigorous examination of Government and State-sponsored bodies that was achieved in the DIRT inquiry, which showed "how effective national politicians can be, working together on a cross-party basis".

Pointing out that roughly 70 per cent of what TDs are asked to do are things that a local councillor is probably in a better position to do, he said TDs should be told "that's not only not your job, but the State is paying someone else to do that job".

There was a "real, if subtle pressure on politicians in all parties to keep proving they're local, that they put what their local area wants right now ahead of what the national good requires, long term.

"There's even a pride in not being able to see the wood for the trees: don't bother me with the facts, I'm safe over here hugging my parish pump."

Mr Dempsey, in an address to the Humbert International School, said the choice was between parochialism and broad-spectrum policies, "policies that address the underlying causes".

That choice "is the central issue in politics right now and for the next 10 years". The challenge was to "provide leadership to take risks for the greater good, to respect the local, without becoming a slave to it".

He believed "we've come to a point where we must shout `Stop' to focus-group politics . . . If we want our national politicians to be constantly looking into potholes and giving the impression they are fixing individual planning permissions and getting medical cards, then we should accept the fact that the Oireachtas will become more irrelevant, and people will become even more cynical about politics and politicians."

The mistake of parish pump politics in the past led to disastrous consequences for the country as a whole and for the west and midlands in particular.

Referring to the national roads programme, he said: "I do not know any politician in Leinster House who disagrees with the need to upgrade our national roads, except perhaps members of the Green Party who reside in Dublin.

"Yet, reading reports in provincial papers, one would be forgiven for thinking that the programme was something imposed on us by foreign agents.

"Some people who vigorously campaigned for a motorway in or adjacent to their towns or cities are now campaigning against the self-same motorway."

That was politics at its worst, he said - all things to all men.

Mr Dempsey, whose plan to end the dual mandate of holding a Dail and council seat at the same time was overturned by the Government, said he was conscious that he was "taking my life in my hands" by talking about a "wider vision".

"You're always much safer in this country not talking about the `vision thing'. In fact, the minute you do talk about it a lot of things happen. People think you're losing the run of yourself, getting out of touch with the realities on the ground."