Hypocritical Sinn Fein always plays the blame game
Much as it would like to deny it, SF does have a record in government – and that record exposes its utter inadequacy, says Willie O’Dea
IN all the analysis of Donald Trump’s victory, I have not seen much comment on the advantage he had of not having a record of governing to defend.
Donald Trump made Hillary Clinton’s record an issue. He had never served in public office, so he could just go on the attack. It was a major political advantage but now that he holds office, it is a trick he cannot pull off again.
Here in Ireland we have a group who try to pull off the same trick over and over again. That group is Sinn Fein.
They attack all around them, claiming that everyone else is out of step bar them. Whatever the issue and whatever the action, Sinn Fein is against it.
Sinn Fein representatives have been unchallenged on it for so long that they have convinced themselves that it is their birth right. They are wrong. Much as they would like to deny it, Sinn Fein does have a record: its record in Government in the North.
And when it comes to what they have done as ministers and the actions they have stood over; very few policy areas expose Sinn Fein’s hypocrisy more than its record on social welfare.
Here in the South they parade themselves as the champions of greater entitlements and higher payments — but take a trip across the border and you will find Sinn Fein presiding over rates of payment that are way lower than the ones they ridicule here.
As meagre as the social welfare provisions here may be, they are way ahead of those in the small part of our island where Sinn Fein holds office.
The hard numbers expose Sinn Fein’s hypocrisy and utter inadequacy.
Jobseeker’s allowance here for people under 25 is €100 per week. In the North, it is a mere €65. A jobseeker over 25 years of age in the North gets €82.23 compared to €188 here (this will increase to €193 — no thanks to Sinn Fein).
It is the same across the board. The maximum rate of contributory old age pension here is €238 per week compared with €175 in Northern Ireland. The rate of lone-parent allowance here will soon rise to €193, but the rate for a person over 18 in Northern Ireland is €81 per week and for a person under 18 it is a miserly €65 per week.
Disability allowance here is €188 per week compared with €93 per week in Northern Ireland. Carer’s allowance here is €204 per week for people under 66 years of age and for people over 66 years of age and caring for one person, it is €242, compared with €69 in Northern Ireland.
The figures speak for themselves. Yet, when you challenge Sinn Fein representatives on how poorly they treat welfare recipients in the North, they throw a hissy fit and say it is nothing to do with them and scream that it is all the fault of those awful, nasty Tories in Westminster.
The problem with this excuse is that it was Sinn Fein who happily handed back whatever welfare powers it had to those self-same Tories in Westminster because it was not willing to accept responsibility for making any tough decisions.
Consider that for a minute. Sinn Fein, whose slogan was once Brits Out, happily handed hard-won powers back to London. They are now the last ones to accuse anyone else of being partitionist.
When it came to a choice between protecting people on welfare or protecting its political cover — Sinn Fein saved itself. So much for its representatives’ self-declared reputation as the champions of the poor and dispossessed.
Yet these are the same guys who will daily accuse Fianna Fail of abdicating its responsibility. Instead of Sinn Fein taking the opportunity to offer a very weakened Fine Gael its support on the condition that its welfare policies were implemented, it did not even bother to try. They disappeared. They hid themselves away until a Government was formed and then crawled out from under their rock to criticise it.
On welfare, public service pay, education, planning and housing Sinn Fein has a record. It is one it would prefer the voters down here did not see, but it is one that the people should and must see: because it is as ugly and failed as so much else about Sinn Fein.
‘Hard numbers expose their hypocrisy and inadequacy’