Drapier: Normally the agenda for Dáil business is set by the Government. Not so this past week.
The newspaper photographs of Liam Keane outside the High Court on Monday were incendiary. The sight of a bolshie teenager from a criminal family walking away after a murder trial and giving the two fingers to us all was infuriating and even a little chilling. The public was incensed. Inevitably a Dáil debate would follow, and so it did.
The Dáil is not good at these things. More often than not we get histrionics and mock anger in spades as the Opposition try to extract political advantage by blaming the Government for events which the Government can do nothing about.
The template was set by John O'Donoghue in the mid 1990s as he crucified Nora Owen on a weekly basis. O'Donoghue's tactics worked and ever since then Fine Gael and Labour have been looking to turn the tables on his successors.
This week was one such effort and, in fairness, not the worst. Enda Kenny, Pat Rabbitte, John Deasy and Jan O'Sullivan all had a go with varying degrees of conviction and style. Michael McDowell was assured in his response though hardly reassuring.
By contrast Bertie lost the head. Having mumbled incoherently in response to the other leaders, he lost his cool in response to barracking from backbenchers and lashed out at "do-gooders and people who go on about rehabilitation". Bertie is an accomplished mumbler and we have come to expect no more from him but the flashes of temper are not a pretty sight.
The public anger at what happened in court this week is real and justified. So too, the anger expressed on all sides in the Dáil. But it is also laced with double standards and a dose of hypocrisy.
In the past three years more than 40 people have been murdered in gangland crimes. Only a handful of prosecutions have been brought and some of those failed. Most of these murders are officially unsolved: the perpetrators are at large and free to kill again. This despite the fact that in many cases the identity of the killers is well known to gardaí.
This is by any standards a monumental failure of policing and a complete failure of the justice system. But yet there has been no hullabaloo, no public outrage, no emergency debate in the Dáil.
The reason is simple. Most, though not all, of those killed were themselves druggies or petty criminals and as a result the public at large didn't and doesn't care. As long as the criminals kill each other and no one else, then most of the public and most members of the Dáil don't give a fiddlers.
The Liam Keanes of this world know the story. The rest of us would do well to give a thought to our own hypocrisy before we choke in outrage the next time that Keane or his likes gives us the two fingers.
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Politicians don't expect to be loved. Normally we are happy enough if people are reasonably polite and leave us to do our shopping or drink our pints in relative peace. But even that is becoming more difficult. At a function a few weeks back, Drapier was approached by a relatively sober young man who proffered the view that he hated paedophiles more than politicians, but only just. The man in question had no particular reason to justify this hierarchy of hate, no personal experience on which to draw. He seemed to think he was stating the obvious. Politicians are scumbags, end of story.
The week off at the end of October was silly and unjustified. Most TDs and senators didn't want or look for time off and Mary Hanafin did us no favours by going ahead anyway. We deserved to be lashed by the public and we were.
That said, the actions of some journalists in stoking up public indignation were well beyond the bounds of what is acceptable. Joe Duffy conducted his radio programme with the relish of someone selling chocolate bars at a public execution. The Sunday Tribune deliberately manipulated a survey of public opinion so as to give themselves the adjectives (corrupt, lazy, etc.) which would fill several pages of bilious rubbish.
This full frontal assault from the media is corrosive and dangerous. It is also unfair and it is galling to read stories under the by-lines of journalists who know, or ought to know, that what they are writing is over-the-top.
Individual politicians have committed many sins over the years, some venial, some less so. Drapier, for one, is very happy that Burke, Lowry, Haughey, Lawlor et al have been found out and hopefully some of them at least will serve time.
However, it does no service to anyone to pretend that these guys are typical of all politicians. It was, after all, other politicians who first pointed the finger at the rotten apples.
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Is Mary O'Rourke mad? Concern for the good lady's marbles has reached new heights following the disclosure that she will co-present a reality TV show about love and the like. Ever since she lost her Dáil seat and became Leader of the Seanad, Mary has lost all the inhibitions which dictate daily life in Leinster House.
She regularly lectures her own Ministers. She told Tom Parlon that his failure to take an Opposition proposal was "a disgrace". She has publicly told Seamus Brennan to get the finger out and stop whingeing about Luas. A few weeks back she told Brian Hayes to quit "the crap".
In short, she seems to have developed a worrying tendency to tell it as she sees it. But is this chronic penchant for always telling the truth evidence of madness? Or does it just mean that Mary, like Edwina Currie before her, is aiming for a new career in broadcasting?