Ian O’Doherty on the race for Áras,

NORMALLY, when us mere mortals apply for a job, the sensible approach is to hold off on conversations about our remuneration until we get to the later stages of negotiations.

When you’re trying to make a good impression with your potential employer, it’s seldom a good idea to open your first conversation with a discussion about the kind of money you expect.

Frankly, that would be as daft as opening your first job interview by informing the people on the other side of the table that you want an expense account and six weeks’ holiday leave.

These are rules that most us are taught in a career-guidance class in school, or from learning from older, more experienced colleagues.

Also, the Irish tend to have a rather ingrained, traditional reluctance to talk about money at the best of times and, as anyone who has ever endured the stress of a job interview will know, they are never the best of times.

But Gavin Duffy, entrepreneur, business titan, adviser to the great and the good and erstwhile judge on ‘Dragons’ Den’, is made of sterner stuff. His assertion over the weekend that he would, indeed, be drawing down his full presidential salary in the event of his election, managed to provoke contempt in some quarters while also proving that he’s not unduly encumbered by our traditional reluctance to talk about our pay packet.

That this should even be an issue is, of course, a result of Michael D Higgins and his well publicised, voluntary reduction of his presidential pay packet.

As his supporters are quick to point out, Mr Higgins has taken a hefty 23pc reduction in his salary, which is an impressive slice of anyone’s cake.

Then again, that much vaunted financial sacrifice only saw his salary fall from €325,507 to a still eye-watering €249,014, so when the current incumbent does step down, he won’t be short of sheckles.

But from a political point of view, the President is already one step ahead from the eager wannabe replacements, who will now have to endure questions about whether they ‘will do their bit for the country’ by only taking a cool quarter of a million, rather than the even cooler 325 grand.

Inevitably, because this is the world in which we now live, people were annoyed at Duffy’s uncompromising stance, even though it makes perfect sense.

After all, he will be standing as an Independent, so lacks the access to the campaign war chest that is provided for those who represent a major party. When you then consider the fact that it will set you back the guts of a million euro to run even a half-competent

campaign, it’s no wonder he wants to try to recoup his losses.

Social media has been abuzz with people accusing Duffy of being greedy, which is not just unfair, it’s utterly ridiculous and also a sign of the sheer madness of the age, where someone who doesn’t volunteer for a pay cut is accused of being mean.

There are, of course, plenty of arguments in favour of either getting rid of the position altogether, or making it entirely voluntary, where the honour of holding the position is seen as sufficient reward.

The more sensible option would be to reduce the total package anyway (after seven years of not putting your hand in your pocket, a nest egg of €100,000 a year to be collected on retirement seems fair) and the fact that the post is far more financially lucrative than many other European heads of state is an obvious indicator that it needs to be trimmed.

But amidst all the accusations flung towards the businessman, people seem to be missing the bigger picture – do we want a saint or a real person doing the job?

Michael D has certainly attained secular sainthood amongst his followers, but while he is obviously purer than the driven snow, he is a notable exception to the rule.

The outraged response in some quarters towards the perfectly reasonable idea of a president simply accepting the salary that’s on offer is another sign of a growing culture which will ultimately hound all aspiring politicians out of ever even standing for office.

Of course, given the evidence routinely provided in the Dáil, some of us might argue that such a development would be no bad thing.

But it’s hard to look at the kind of bloodbath that seems to develop around the race for this essentially meaningless position and not be reminded of a joke currently doing the rounds in American political and journalistic circles which predicts that democratic politics as we know it only has about 15 years left. The reason?

Well, the half joke/half theory suggests that by that stage, everyone will have grown up with social media. Therefore, everyone will have said something stupid and career-killing in their past that will come back and haunt them.

As a result nobody, with the exception of the very pure, the very boring and the very mad will ever put their head above the parapet.

That’s because we now know so much about every politician that we get to pick and choose on morality and stupid, long-dormant tweets rather than policy.

THE exception to this, as ever, is Trump and his victory was delivered by people who know he’s a weirdo but they don’t care about the man, they care about his plan. But in the humdrum world of regular, relatively sane politics, we are in danger of obsessing over salaries, and old utterances, and things which are ephemeral. In the bigger scheme of things, the losing presidential candidates will find themselves battered, bruised and possibly bankrupt – but them’s the breaks, as they say.

In the meantime, we can at least look forward to the debates, and the septennial madness which descends on the country, when the first question will, inevitably, be about whether they even want to be paid for the job. Of all the reasons to vote, or not vote, for any of the candidates, deciding on the basis of whether they want to get paid or not is surely the most fatuous.