People enter politics for power. Its pursuit is the reason for all those constituency meetings, the clinics, the evenings spent meeting local lunatics who want compensation because their cows have been impregnated by Martians.
We need politicians. Somebody has to say things they don't mean. Society needs it. It's the same with all callings. Doctors have to look up people's bottoms, accountants have to understand Finance Acts, and journalists have to get drunk at other people's expense. This is the price of belonging to a profession - and in our case, one we accept with modest nobility. But this doesn't mean any group should always be allowed endlessly to indulge itself. This is especially true of politicians.
Why is the Minister for Education, Noel Dempsey, trying to get all schools to take holidays at the same time? What advantage is there to it? What is the logic of telling Jewish or Muslim schoolchildren that they should celebrate Christmas with an extended break, but not similarly mark Ramadan or Yom Kippur? There is none: the reason for standardising the school year is largely about the exercise of political power. I do, therefore I am.
Dáil Éireann is still infused with the pro-consular culture of Dublin Castle: government by central edict, regardless of need or sense or demand. Why should little Ahmed, little Moise, little Christie, attend school at the same time, with the same terms? But equally, why is our education so completely centralised? Why is a single central government department responsible for the entire range of educational institutions, from Montessori schools to primary schools, local techs, religious boarding schools, regional colleges, teachers' training colleges and universities? And is it surprising that across vast swathes of Irish educational life, our institutions resemble a train crash?
There's only so much social engineering any government is capable of; and most of such engineering seldom goes beyond doing something for the sake of appearances (as in the "revival" of the Irish language). But it's quite clear that the failure of working-class children to achieve places in third-level education - and I'm not even talking about universities here - is one of the most deplorable failures of the Irish State.
Educating the poor is a State monopoly - as were Bord na Móna, Aer Lingus, ESB, CIÉ: all of them money-guzzling failures until the brisk wind of competition lifted their sails. Why not end that monopoly? It's simply not possible for privatised primary and secondary education to do worse than the Irish State has done in educating the unskilled working classes - or rather, not educating them at all.
Compare the schools of the Republic, where the State monopolises the education of the unlettered proletariat and protects their illiteracy with unimpeachable vigilance, with the schools of Northern Ireland. Religious orders (i.e., private institutions) run St Louise's, St Mary's, St Malachy's, CBS Glen Road, St Dominic's, St Genevieve's. Any one of these will get more working-class pupils into university in a single year than will all the State schools in Dublin combined.
Pop across the sectarian divide, and on the Shankill Road you'll find the same diseased combination of educational under-achievement and populist disdain for academic distinction as exists in the housing estates of Darndale and Kilbarrack. What unites these very different areas is the state monopoly on education, and crucially at primary level: monopoly on the maintenance of the schools, on the appointment of teachers, on the provision of syllabus, on school priorities, on the budget, on holidays.
The abolition of university fees in the Republic in 1997 - essentially by Labour - was odious cant and slithery sanctimony. Of course it was presented as a means of getting more working-class students into university. That's right; and also to get more Congolese pygmies onto the moon. As its authors well know, the academic careers of the children of G4 economic group, or whatever it is, evaporate long before they even get a sniff of the Leaving Cert.
The abolition of university fees was a present from a middle-class Labour Party, whose ministers' voters lived in south Dublin, to itself. It was a politically correct tax-break for the well-off, subsidised by the working classes. Naturally, Labour presented this breathtakingly cynical act of naked self-interest as concern for the proles - whom they generally respect so much that they live as far from them as they possibly can. Meanwhile, their constituents could now buy little Emily or Conor or Jessica a car to drive to Belfield in.
Universities simply shouldn't be the playthings of politicians; and governments should no more decide what fees they charge than they do what fees Glenstal or Clongowes or indeed Ryanair charge. In the US, universities are mostly free-standing institutions which decide their own budgets and raise their own funds. Accordingly, the US has the most successful university education programme (and accordingly, the largest per capita middle class) in the world.
Where education in the US fails is precisely where it fails in Ireland, where the state has declared a monopoly: in the teaching of the poor. So why do we allow this lamentable farce to continue? And why is the criminal failure of this state monopoly not merely tolerated, but not even discussed? Is it because of the same kind of statist ideological dogma which for decades gave Aer Lingus a state monopoly, and crushed the life out of air travel? Once again, the State has failed dismally. So why not contract out the education of the poor to private suppliers? Enter Michael O'Leary, B. Ed.