Ivan the terrible had some cheek to monster Healy-Rae
Isn’t Ivan Yates terrible altogether? There was the former politician, recovering bankrupt and now one of Ireland’s top media personalities, summoning up maximum, warp-speed indignation against Kerry TD Michael Healy-Rae on his Tonight Show.
If Yates proved anything it was that he has no time at all for selfreflection – and his sense of irony is also on the blink.
Healy-Rae clearly violated Yates’s high standards of political probity by having the temerity to go against the zeitgeist and heap praise on the beleaguered former FAI boss John Delaney at an Oireachtas committee hearing.
Yates could hardly control his fury and delivered a haymaker rant accusing Healy-Rae of both a craven and leprechaun performance in the Dáil.
As TV spats go, this was well in excess of a hissy fit.
Call me old fashioned, but when I see a former politician calling a current politician craven and behaving like a leprechaun (whatever that means?) I reach for the record sheets of the accuser.
Now, it can hardly be said that the indignant Yates had a stellar political career during his time as a Fine Gael TD. I reckon, apart from himself, there’s nobody out there who remembers anything he ever did that was worth talking about while a member of the Dáil or in Cabinet. His time in politics was entirely without distinction.
As for his business career subsequently – well, perhaps the less said about that the better.
His Celtic Bookmakers Celtic Tiger mistakes left a big hole in the bank balance of his creditors and resulted in him enduring an enforced sojourn across the Irish Sea to allow those little difficulties calm down a bit before he could show his face about the place again.
Talking to the Irish Times in 2013 Yates said he understood public concerns about the €3million debts that were left after his business collapsed, especially since the bank owed that money belonged to the State – that’s you and me left picking up the tab.
And then there’s that little matter of his State pension – again at our expense. That pension comes to well over €70,000 a year, after only about 20 years in politics. And the man is still only 59. While he was swanning in Swansea for 16 months Yates confirmed that he lived off that generous State pension. Now, having considered all that, does anybody really think Yates has the right to brand Michael Healy-Rae, or anybody else, as a national embarrassment? Really?