Fianna Fail disease begins to spread again

Fianna Fail leader, Michael Martin, was doing the media rounds last week in an effort to promote himself and his party.

Inevitably, the question of Fianna Fail’s part in the economic crisis was raised and inevitably Mr. Martin wallowed in traditional Irish denial and dishonesty.

Here’s some of what he had to say in an interview last week with the Sunday Business Post (Sub req’d).

We made mistakes but I’ve a broader sense of history and big events like this have more profound and complex origins.

The underlying message here is twofold – what happened in Ireland was caused by the global crisis (the Lehman Bros. thesis) and most Irish citizens are not as intelligent as I am and so are unable to grasp the big picture.

Mr. Martin goes on:

Now people are reading articles about the origins of the crisis going back to the formation of the euro itself; that it was a fundamentally flawed design which has given rise to property bubbles in the periphery of Europe including Ireland, Portugal and Spain.

Suddenly, people are reading these articles and saying it’s a bit more profound, a bit more complex than ‘it’s all Fianna Fail’s fault, which was the refrain for nine months before the election.

This is a global crisis on a par with 1929.

So, people are beginning to read articles and wake up to the ‘fact’ that Fianna Fail is not so corrupt and incompetent after all.

This is the grossly insulting stance Martin and his party have decided to run with in order to restore their status with Irish voters.

Depressingly, if recent polls are correct, the strategy is already succeeding.

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Fianna Fail
Michael Martin