KUDOS TO THOSE IN PUBLIC OFFICE
On page 10 of today’s issue, we speak to the new Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alison Gilliland. How refreshing it is to see the chain being handed from one woman to another. It’s equally heartening to see so many women on the ballot in this week’s Dublin Bay South by-election, which will be unravelled this weekend after voting took place on Thursday. I wholeheartedly admire anyone who enters the running for public office – it’s a relentless, thankless task. No matter what you do, you’re going to be berated for letting somebody down. You only have to look at events of the past year. We were in the midst of a global pandemic, something none of us has ever experienced before – just as we were learning, so too were politicians, healthcare experts and world leaders. Yet people were demanding immediate answers and solutions from them. Yes, they have expert advice and global reports to help them make their decisions, but what use is that when everything is unfolding in real time? For every new road that’s opened, someone will tell you the money would have been better spent on healthcare. For every penny that’s given to research into Parkinson’s disease, someone will claim it would be better spent on building houses. Everybody feels like their cause is the most important one. In the art of seeking votes, politicians will always fight hardest for those causes that matter most to their constituents – but sure that’s why we vote them in in the first place. Every now and again, a problem comes along that’s so huge that politicians have no choice but to pull in the same direction, together, which is what has happened in the past 16 months. There have been disagreements along the way, but for the most part, we’ve seen pretty cohesive decision-making in the Dáil. Now that reopening is so, so close, the arguments are starting again. It’s almost refreshing to see as it means normality is on the horizon! It’s going to take the country – indeed, the world – a long, long time to recover from Covid-19, physically, mentally and economically. Tough decisions will have to be made and not everybody is going to agree with them. I fear it’s only going to get worse before it gets better for those in public office, who will bear the brunt of the blame for what’s to come. Whlle I wholeheartedly believe that elected representatives should be held to account, it must be tempered by asking what exactly they could and should have done differently. Our system by its nature makes change difficult and cumbersome. That’s not a get-out clause, but it’s something worth bearing in mind the next time someone feels like blaming their local representative for something that’s happening in the highest echelons of government. As should always be the rule for everything in life, be kind.
Enjoy the issue.