RTE appears obsessed with Boris Johnson’s run-ins with the law but is conveniently ignoring the criminal investigation involving Leo Varadkar - our next prime minister.
Similarly the outrage over the €294,920 salary gifted to civil servant Robert Watt got just over 20 seconds on Wednesday’s Six One News while the British PM’s “Partygate” is getting live coverage from London most days.
It would appear that RTE and many other media outlets deem it safe to gloat over Britain’s scandals but dare not mention, let alone expose, our own.
A recent editorial in a national newspaper that wasn’t the Mirror, the Star or the Sun actually hailed this country as a bastion of probity when, in my opinion, it is among the most corrupt states in the world.
Commenting on Boris Johnson’s “shenanigans” it stated: “The sane, sensible and, at times, sedate manner in which politics is generally conducted in Ireland makes us ill-prepared to understand how otherwise civilised nations can tolerate the most outrageous shenanigans of their political leaders.”
Hang on, this is the country which had a prime minister who was on the take to the tune of €11million while selling Irish passports for his own gain to rich Arabs. Had Charlie Haughey been in the UK, he’d have spent years in jail.
And didn’t we have a finance minister – later a Taoiseach – who had a wardrobe stuffed with money and claimed he won a mountain of cash on a horse whose name he couldn’t remember?
Better not mention the minister who helped the businessman win the second mobile phone licence.
When it comes to scandals Ireland is a world epicentre and what makes us even more unique is that no one is ever held to account.
Ireland is also totally out of kilter with the rest of Europe when it comes to the huge salaries paid to top civil servants for administering a country with one of the smallest populations in the EU.
The obscene salary handed to Secretary General of the Department of Health, Robert Watt, even made the news in the UK where top civil servants receive a fraction of the pay handed to their Irish counterparts.
For instance HSE chief executive Paul Reid is on a salary of €420,000 while the head of England’s National Health Service Simon Stevens is on less than £199,000 (€238,000).
When Mr Stevens took over as chief executive of the NHS he was offered a salary of £211,000-a-year (€253,000) but he took a voluntary 10% pay cut and started on £189,000 (€226,000).
On the other hand Robert Watt was on €211,000 a year in his previous role as secretary-general at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform but somehow managed to get a rise and now has a salary of €294,920. He’d originally waived the extra cash because of the pandemic when most workers were on the PUP but it was disclosed this week that he has taken the €80,000 rise, which is the equivalent of twice the average industrial wage.
Disclosed is probably the wrong word, forced into revealing it is closer to the truth.
Now there’s a situation where the combined annual wage bill for Paul Reid and Robert Watt is €715,000 for running a health service that lurches from one crisis to the next.
Ironically we learned of Mr Watt’s obscene salary on the day mental health services in Kerry admitted to harming children who already have their own challenges.
HSE-run mental health services are in an appalling state – I have personal experience of it – and there is every reason to believe that what took place in Kerry is being replicated around the country.
Yesterday Finance Minister Donohoe said Mr Watt deserved the huge pay rise because he was “fundamental” during the pandemic, which was a bit rich coming for a man who refused to pay frontline student nurses any salary.
Taoiseach Micheal Martin also defended Mr Watt’s pay hike and then claimed was not out of touch with the realities of life in this country.
Come the next election he’ll discover just how out of touch he is.
