Analysis of 'analysis' - deconstructing a Senator's wise words

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Monday February 16, 2009 13:06 by Paul O' Sullivan paulosullivan01 at gmail dot com

What Senators say on Sundays

Because yesterday evening was a little chilly I lit the fire, having no hesitation in using p.25 of that day's edition of the Sindo to make flame.

Senator Eoghan Harris was starting fires of his own on this page of the analysis section. And for such a bold opening statement, given the Taoiseach’s preceding show of toughness (most would not consider passing buck and burden to the taxpayer tough), I looked forward to a meaty explanation, it being analysis an’ all. None was forthcoming, which on reading the entire article was unsurprising.

This wasn’t exactly political laboratory stuff. An unsupported decree of one man’s character and a thinly veiled excuse for another’s oversight unjustifiably prompted the author to ask a question of rule-books and what was timidly termed throughout as a ‘structural crisis’. I myself use calibre crisis to describe the entire situation. Our structures are fine. It is the calibre of person inserted into these structures that’s causing problems. But why stop there at overuse of clichéd phrases: ‘fat cats’ is used four times in the article.

Then came the age-old political tradition of pasting the opposition (is it any wonder politicians can’t get a break?). Accusing Eamon Gilmore of tendencies to perform may have held some weight if Mr. Harris had not, verbatim on the Late Late Show, asked Mr. Eamon Dunphy to do same just over a week before his published article. Sounds a little like banging a drum to me. All too twee and tidy.

‘History does not repeat itself’ was an eye-catcher. Nice and Lisbon sprang to mind. And while in the most technical sense the statement is somewhat true the connotations are a curve ball. If Senator Harris actually believed what he wrote, why did he resort to Ireland’s past to provide the Taoiseach advice for the future? And if the past is of no precedent why is the Senator advocating a republican government at the very least? The past, I thought he said, had no consequence for the future.

But the article’s true heat emanated from the Senators prediction of lines drawn, and effort to draw those lines, between sections of Irish society outwith the political class. ‘From now on the public will also be focusing on the big farmers and professional classes – the fat subsidies, the five-minute doctors and the fee-bloated legal class whose obese monument is the Mahon tribunal.’

For the sake of clarity these lines need to be defined. Perhaps doctors and lawyers were the professional classes when Senator Harris was qualifying and beginning a career. But those who helped, some quite literally, build Ireland during the last two decades consider themselves worthy of this bracket. These are the public.

Anyway, this prediction smelled rat-like, a ploy to protect politicians through division perhaps. Any division between people will arise from economic misfortune, the roots of which were sown by governmental mismanagement at government level; the ‘party on’ and ‘If I have it I’ll spend it’ attitude of former finance ministers. Let us not forget that when, or if, we the public begin to turn on ourselves.

Granted, apportioned advice on speed and precedent was commendable. But Ireland is in enough trouble without editors devoting column inches to impartial commentators providing partisan arguments for future action, regardless of political rank and file. As for a revolutionary situation, only in Ireland could organised public protests, all-out strike action and a Government on the brink of downfall be portrayed as guillotine stuff.