Dear Bertie, - I think I can address you with such familiarity because I just might be your latest constituent, and I know how fond you are of a vote. You see, I've recently bought and moved into a beautiful Georgian apartment in Mountjoy Square and, after 30 years in the sticks (my God, how quickly one becomes contemptuous of life in the suburbs) I have taken to inner-city living like a duck to Marlay Park's ponds.
The joy of walking to work instead of being stuck for an hour trying to negotiate the Andean mountain pass that is Ranelagh is indescribable - provided, of course, that I avert my eyes from the in-fill refuse dump that is Parnell Street, which, judging from the litter swirling around on any given morning, was last swept by Dublin Corporation in 1956. Please kick a few Corpo cleansing department backsides and you will have my vote for life.
Voting FF
Now, I have to admit that a McGoldrick vote for Fianna Fail will not be a first. After years of uttering "a plague on all your houses" and refusing to vote for any party with pretensions to power - instead finding obscure socialist independents and once, memorably, taking a yogic flyer and plumping for the Natural Law Party (who speak more sense than Fine Gael) - I finally followed the family tradition two elections ago and gave FF my one-two-three.
Instantly I felt a strange sense of inner peace. The prodigal had returned to his spiritual home. Or perhaps the effects of my vote for the Natural Law Party (who speak more sense than Labour/Democratic Left or whatever they're called this week) still held me in a transcendental state of bliss.
Whatever, I was home. And then a strange thing happened. I discovered that I seemed to be the only person in the editorial department of The Irish Times who had ever voted for Fianna Fail. ail. Not one reporter. Not one sub-editor. Not one feature writer. Not one columnist - now there's a surprise! And Not only that - ail with a passion.
Whew! And then it struck me - I realised that I had never in my life met anyone in Dublin who admitted to voting for Fianna Fail! None of my friends did. None of my wife's friends did. None of our old neighbours did. (I've met only one new neighbour so far and the subject hasn't come up - yet!)
Nobody votes for Fianna Fail. Or, at least, nobody admits to voting for Fianna Fail! Now, Bertie, my new pal, why should that be? And what can you do about it?
Well, the first thing you must do is remove the embarrassment factor, and that is a biggie. You know what that is, don't you? The awful feeling most people have that, while Fianna Fail might eventually get the job done, they're still a bunch of t'ick, jumped-up rednecks, beholden to any number of vested interests - big business, publicans, taxi drivers, et al. . . that all they are interested in is what they can do for their own parish, what they can do to ensure another term with their snout in the Dail trough.
Proclamation
This perception, unfair as it may be because the other parties are every bit as bad, is cemented every time a Fianna Fail TD is found to have stuffed his (and it invariably is a his) pockets with cash under the pretence that it is a campaign contribution and is failing to do what the party was founded to do - and that is fulfil the aspirations of the Proclamation. Well, Bertie, call me Pollyanna if you will, but you will never - and I mean never - get a better chance to treat all the children of the Nation equally.
The State is awash with cash and, properly spent, our economic potential is limitless. But what good will a £40 billion National Plan do - other than copper-fasten economic prosperity for the haves - if we have an ever-growing underclass of have-nots, no-hopers with their noses pressed up against the windowpane? They are already smearing it. How long before they smash it? The consequences of ignoring the existence of this underclass are already depressing; if you refuse to engage the issue it could become catastrophic.
Take, for example, the growing Hydra of crime and drugs, much of it in your (and now my) constituency. Can anyone be surprised that while the monster is spawned in the poorest areas it spreads into so-called middle-class areas with terrifying speed? And then upper-class areas. And then rural areas. This pattern has been documented all over the western world. Do you believe Ireland will be different? It is already happening here, and we are already seeing the beginnings of the gated community syndrome.
Embarrassment
And then there is racism. It is but an ugly, rancid seedling at the moment, but every time your Minister for so-called Justice opens his mouth and talks of us being "swamped", another batch of ignorant gobshites feels justified in snarling at poor, vulnerable, "different" people in the streets. And the FF embarrassment factor grows a little more. Let the asylum-seekers work - if they have had the gumption and ingenuity to have made their way across a continent or two to get to this tiny island, then they will be an asset to any economy. And Ireland may avoid the creation of more ghettoes - ethnic ones as opposed to economic ones.
Bertie, sort it out now. You have the resources; develop the will. The stakes could not be higher. Forget the State - the Nation is screaming for leadership, North and South. Take Fianna Fail back to its radical roots, create the equal society Pearse envisioned and you will rule for a generation - and my colleagues in The Irish Times who actually do vote Fianna Fail but are too embarrassed to say so will be embarrassed no more. And let's have that lunch!