Ross has become emblem of the system he once derided
POLITICS is full of disappointment – for the politicians who do not feel they achieved enough, or got sufficient credit for their achievements, and for the political parties who cannot believe that their reasonable and perhaps even wonderful ideas have not caught on with the electorate. But, most of all, it is disappointing for us, the voters, who feel constantly let down by the promises of those we vote for.
Our greatest disappointment, however, is with those we thought were different: the outsiders who railed against the ‘insiders’ and the cosy system and the cronyism, and who relentlessly attacked the wasteful spending of public money.
So is there any greater fall in delivery and promise than Shane Ross, our Transport and Sport Minister? Every week, in print and radio, he used to attack our bloated quangos, and how our politicians dished out taxpayers’ dough to court votes. Ross spoke up for small business people and excoriated the ‘beards’ of Siptu and the public sector trade unions and how the spineless politicians caved in to them.
No one was spared and his language was colourful. He and a few others were a reassuring chorus against overspending, and benchmarking and general political messing. He even wrote books about it all. One called ‘Untouchables’ shone ‘a light into the dark corners of official Ireland’ and another, entitled ‘Wasters’, had a tag line that now reads as hilarious: “The people who squander your taxes on white elephant projects, international junkets and favours for their mates – and how they get away with it.”
The difference with Ross was that he went into politics. He became a senator and a leading noise on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). But ‘noise’ might be an appropriate word here, for the haste with which Lord Ross ran down the Dáil plinth after a PAC controversy and into the nearest microphones made many ask: is Shane just in it for himself?
But the wider public still saw a saviour in this Anglo-Irish crusader, this posh Don Quixote from Dublin South, which does seem to produce these dramatic if problematic saviours (Alan Shatter, Peter Matthews, George Lee etc). Sir
The public still saw a saviour in this Anglo-Irish crusader, this posh Don Quixote
Winston Churchtown, they called him. Cometh the crash, Lord Ross carried his high-minded crusade into the Dáil itself. He was even going to form a new political party. But then he relented and created a loose ‘alliance’ of Independents, even though its components were diametrically opposed – hard left, centre right and whatever you’re having yourself (cath lab, Garda station etc).
This should have sounded warning bells about Ross’s intentions. In fact, there was no ideology here, just a shop front for pork-barrel politicians to get what they want. How successful they have been in our paralysed system of new politics.
Ross has led the way. Top of his shopping list was the infamous re-opening of Stepaside garda station in his constituency, even though gardaí believed it was not a priority. Public monies, me eye. Lord Ross wanted his cop shop opened. When he met Fianna Fáil to try to form a government, Micheál Martin reportedly told him straight off: “You have your Garda station.” And you thought things had changed.
ROSS formed a Government with Fine Gael itself and got himself a ministry where he could carry on with his empire building and agenda. He didn’t get involved in the bus or rail strikes and the poorly planned Luas extension is clogging up the bus lanes. Ah, well.
Worse still, Ross has waded into areas that do not concern him, such as on judicial appointments. Our existing system, of Government nominations has worked perfectly well for decades, but for unfathomable reasons, Ross has waded in with proposals and language that have been highly offensive to the judiciary.
Meanwhile, he pursues a punitive attitude to alcohol usage and driving that drives another nail into the coffin of rural Ireland. Again, the existing law here was doing fine. But then Lord Ross doesn’t live in rural Ireland – far from it.
Indeed, this week, we saw the high (or low) point of Shane Ross’s transformation from fearless system-changer to public money dispenser when he publicly boasted about giving the uber-posh Wesley College in Dublin a whopping €150,000 for hockey facilities.
This largesse was far from an isolated gesture. In 2016, Ross also wrote €190,000 cheques for Old Wesley RFC, Old Belvedere RFC and Rathdown School, all in the capital. Meanwhile, the Sports Capital Programme showed that just €600 went to a soccer club in Coolock, north Dublin.
Minister Ross says he didn’t have the final say on all this and there has been no favouritism. But interestingly the Department of Sport has said it will now review the process for handing out such grants.
What galls people is the clearly privileged nature of the institutions here, reflecting the minister’s own unashamed posh demeanour. Ridicule is heaped on the Healy-Raes or Alan Kelly for this type of politics, but why should there an exemption because you are posh? But the real disappointment for the rest of us is how a once energetic and witty scourge of old-style ‘insider’ politics not only joined the system but became its most glaring example.