ELITIST? MICHEÁL STANDS FOR THE WORKERS TOO

ANY fair-minded person who saw the TV coverage of Micheál Martin’s return home to Cork on Sunday would have to admit he is not living in the lap of luxury, but rather in the type of comfortable urban estate in which so many working people reside.

Anyone bothered to find out about his past would know that he grew up in the most ordinary of circumstances, going to the local schools as the son of a bus driver who also had some renown in Cork as a talented boxer.

Any reasonably intelligent person with a working knowledge of the Constitution would have to acknowledge he is our Taoiseach, democratically elected by a majority of Dáil Éireann. Martin (right) has been the subject of some ridiculous comment in recent days, not just in the sewer of social media but from some Opposition politicians who pander to the mob that congregates there.

The ridiculous #notmyTaoiseach campaign flourishes there, along with claims that the parties allegedly ‘disenfranchised’ by the carve-up of spoils somehow represent ‘ordinary working families’, the implication being the parties of government, by contrast, are only interested in so-called ‘elites’.

Whatever may be said about Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – and indeed the Greens – many among the socalled ‘ordinary working families’ vote for those parties too, and to say otherwise is as insulting to those voters as it is to their representatives. However Martin performs in his new job, I expect he will try his best to serve everyone, no matter where they come from or end up.