Yet again yesterday morning The Irish Times led the newspaper with the FAI/Sky story, having done so on several days previously. It has not been alone. Most other newspapers and news programmes have focused on little else. All of a sudden something to do with fairness has crept on to the national agenda, writes Vincent Browne
But what is wrong with excluding the poor wretches and their unfortunate children who cannot pay for a Sky Sports subscription from watching Irish home internationals live on television? At least they can watch it a half-an-hour later on TV3, and what's so bad about that? It doesn't lock them out. It merely defers their enjoyment. It can't be because it treats people unequally, can it?
It doesn't matter in every other sphere of life. If marginal fairness in the watching of football matches is an issue how is it that elemental fairness in the health service is not? Elemental fairness because in relation to every major ailment - cancers, heart diseases, strokes, mental illness, the lot - the poorer sections of society fare far worse (the mortality rate for is four, five, six times as high for them from most diseases).
How is it that there is no protest over this, that the media are not exercised by it, that Bertie Ahern is not calling in the agencies of inequality to explain their conduct, that the agencies of the State are not deployed to undo that unfairness?
Football is different.
In education, why is there no concern over the huge disparities in literacy levels between people from well-off backgrounds and those from poor backgrounds?
No concern over the attainment levels achieved in the Leaving Certificate by students from well-off backgrounds and those from deprived backgrounds? No concern over the levels of participation at higher education levels between students from these different backgrounds?
Football is different.
The Government recently introduced a scheme which will greatly enrich the well-off section of society at the expense of the public purse. This is the Special Savings Incentive Scheme (SSIS). This will transfer resources of over €700 million annually to those who can most afford to join the scheme.
Although relatively modestly-off people are able to participate, the vast preponderance of the wealth transfer will go to those who can participate to the maximum extent. There has been no hue and cry over that unfairness.
Football is different.
Of course, we are used to the State favouring the rich. As Garret FitzGerald and others have repeatedly pointed out, the last 15 budgets have favoured the rich over the poor. In the world of the organ of Sir Anthony O'Reilly, "it's payback time" and it has been payback time for 15 years. No fuss even over that unfairness.
But football is different.
The Ansbacher and DIRT scams highlight more of it. Not a single rich criminal is brought to book for even one crime of this wave. Meanwhile, hysteria is generated over other crime waves and prisons have to be built and expanded to house overwhelmingly poor criminals. No concern over the blatant injustice and unfairness of our criminal justice system.
Football is different.
If you went into one of the maternity hospitals this morning and looked at the rows of newborn babies, you could have a good guess at the life chances of each of them by knowing the social class they come from. You would need to know nothing about their innate intelligence, or their potential to contribute to the enrichment of the community through the arts, education, science, politics or business, their inherent capacity to bring joy to their family and friends.
The very fact of their social background would be enough in many cases to predict whether they will have rich and fulfilling lives or impoverished, diminished lives. And it is our social and political system that ordains that. And still no complaint over that unfairness.
Football is different.
The Taoiseach's "big idea", the only "big idea" he has offered us since becoming Taoiseach five years ago, is to build a stadium for football at the cost of hundreds of millions of euro. In the immediate environs of the site of that proposed stadium are impoverished communities and estates that would be transformed by the expenditures of a fraction of those millions on their infrastructure, on the quality of their houses, on community facilities, on their schools, on health services. What is there about football that takes precedence over such basic needs?
Of course, there was the madness of the Farmleigh House purchase and renovation at a cost of over €40 million. Again, how conceivably could this extravagance take precedence over expenditure on the homes and estates in its vicinity? Just a short distance from Farmleigh are the horrors of the inner-city slums. Why should the purchase of a lavish mansion take precedence over the regeneration of these homes of wretchedness? Nobody complained.
And when the government needed to cut back on expenditure in the face of the emerging fiscal crisis, it targeted the poor of the world. The development aid budget was slashed. No one complained about that unfairness.
Football is different.