Fair play, Dunphy

EAMON Dunphy has many gifts: one of the most valuable among them is his tendency to say something which everybody knows to be true but are too cowed to say aloud. Hence the visible shock on Ryan Tubridy’s face last Friday when Dunphy casually remarked that Fianna Fail was an anti-establishment party. That may strike the pundits who continually harp on about Charlie Haughey’s Charvet shirts or the spectators in the Galway tent as a bit much. But in obsessing about Haughey’s lifestyle, they miss the point that the speculators were spending the banks’ money because they had no real old money of their own.

This illustrates the fundamental difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Fine Gael is full of people with old money, their own money or money made from fat cattle farming or fat professional fees. By contrast, Fianna Fail money is usually some flash-in-the-pan cash cobbled together on a wing and a prayer to finance some scheme that will bring jobs, if it works, or ruin and disgrace if it fails. That process is called capitalism. Fine Gael true blues can sit on their dividends and do nothing and still make money while enjoying the esteem of commentators in the paper of record. But the Fianna Fail “rogues” (in Dunphy’s phrase) had to do some creative thinking in order to make money.

During the week RTE showed us pictures of Richard Bruton riding on the back of private sector risk takers who are in the business of creating jobs. Bruton and the public sector benefit from this, but do not themselves take any risks. Fianna Fail has a visceral appeal to those outsiders who rise by merit and borrowed money instead of resting on old money within a circle of insiders. Eamon Dunphy did us a service by reminding us of the hard truth behind our political structures.