This is the long goodbye

So Bertie bit the bullet. He had no other option in the end. He was like a boxer who had been cornered for too long. The jabs had been raining in for some time. More recently the lawyers for the Mahon Tribunal had begun to land some upper cuts. He was bleeding not over one eye but two. His breathing was heavy. He was getting more and more confused. If he stayed in the ring, he was going to get wasted. Better to pull out before they landed a blow that might prove fatal.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. The Tribunal is doing what it was set up to do. It’s rooting around for answers. It is looking for at least a plausible version of the truth. The problem is that this wasn’t forthcoming. And the more Bertie seemed to obfuscate, the harder they dug, the more damning the evidence became. As the wheels of the Tribunal machine ground on, through the muck and the murk, one revelation was added to another to produce a thoroughly warped collage.
That Bertie has been through a form of Chinese water torture is to put it mildly. You’d have to feel for anyone caught under the drip, drip, drip of it. Stuff that he had assumed was private being dragged out into the light. His dealings with the Revenue Commissioners opened and re-opened for public scrutiny. Arrangements with his ex-girlfriend too. Stuff that looks all wrong exposed. Not something you’d wish on an enemy. And no one has ever said that Bertie was – or is – anything other than a nice guy, in the ordinary, everyday meaning of the term. So no, watching it unfold hasn’t been pleasant.
But he was Taoiseach of the country. A higher standard of probity was – or is – expected of him than of the average citizen for precisely that reason. Certainly there is a greater level of accountability required.
Maybe that seems unfair to the man into whose eyes the light is being shone. Perhaps, also, there is some truth in the contention that actions taken in the early 1990s are being judged by standards that have evolved over the fifteen years since. But the weaknesses were there in his defence: he had let his guard down all those years ago and – even as he ducked – the blows landed. And landed.
The great conciliator couldn’t massage this problem out of existence. The quality for which he was most, and rightly, renowned was of no use in a contest that was mano a mano, to the bitter end. Sad as it was for him personally, and for his many admirers, it was the right decision to stand down.
Let history decide on his legacy. In the meantime, forget about dancing on his political grave. There is no dignity in it.
Instead, reflect on this: in his going, maybe there is an opportunity for us all to move on politically. In a sense, the Bertie factor distorted things. His huge personal popularity gave Fianna Fáil that extra 3% that made all the difference come election time. The effect of it was that people failed to adequately express, via the ballot box, the widespread feeling of dissatisfaction that is apparent every day, with the performance of the Government on vital issues – most notably our appalling Health services.
With it out of the equation the Government, and Fianna Fáil in particular, will need to get to grips with the problems or to suffer badly. That doesn’t mean going, in a knee jerk style, with the lowest common denominator view. It means getting the priorities right and leading from the front in addressing them.
As it happens, Brian Cowen is another decent skin. He is also smart and capable. A lot of his instincts are good. And he has a streak of honesty about him, as reflected in Jason O’Toole’s celebrated Hot Press interview on the run-up to the last election.
For Fianna Fáil he is a good choice. And he might yet prove to be an even better choice for the country. He should start, for example, by insisting on adopting the 57 changes that have been urged by the Law Society in the Immigration Bill – one of the most deeply offensive and wrong-headed pieces of legislation to be put to the Oireachtas in decades. As a solicitor, he will understand the importance of the reservations that have been expressed.
And secondly, he can urgently set about breaking up the HSE, with community and external care and ancillary services being provided with an entirely separate administration and budget from that of the hospital service. It is the only way out of our current mess. Oh, and, on a slightly lighter note, he can insist that the idiotic waste of money on ramps by local authorities all over the country is stopped for once and for all!
Get that much done before the summer holidays and he’ll be heading in the right direction.