The course of history has thrown up two different kinds of invaders. One, the most successful, is the coloniser. Colonisers like the Romans or the British, move in, gradually extend their control and build long-lasting structures of rule. Their methods may be brutal and their motives may be greed and self-aggrandisement, but the scale of their ambitions is, in terms of both time and place, large. They have the confidence to plan for the long term so, for good and ill, they leave behind legacies that those they rule will never quite shake off.
Then there are the raiders, like the Vandals or the Visigoths. They sweep from the edges of a decadent empire, storming the citadels and putting the complacent old rulers to the sword. But they retain, at heart, a strange sense of inferiority - even though they have seized power, they fear the revenge of the vanquished. They cannot quite bring themselves to believe in their conquest so they grab whatever treasures they can and carry them back to their domain. They see power, not as an opportunity to shape the destiny of future generations, but as a short-term, smash-and-grab project.
So it is with Irish politics. We, too, have our colonisers and raiders, our Romans and our Visigoths, our Brits and our Vandals. Broadly speaking, it might be said that those who founded the State and sustained it through its awkward adolescence were intent on colonising power. They moved in on the structures of governance with the intention of reshaping them in their own image. Theirs was a long-term, ideological project, driven by a desire to shape the destinies of future generations.
But gradually, the Romans were replaced by Visigoths. As the ideological confidence of Cosgrave, de Valera and Lemass gave way to the uncertainty of life in the global economy, the temptation to see public office as a smash-and-grab raid became, for some, irresistible. Where de Valera wanted to create a timeless Irish spiritual empire, Charles Haughey's ambition was to fill his pockets with loot, cover his traces and get safely home to Kinsealy with his grotesquely inflated self-image intact.
But for some accidents of fate, he might have pulled it off.
More typically, however, the contemporary political bigwig conducts his raids primarily on behalf of his tribe rather than himself. While it is necessary, of course, to keep up the pretence of being a Roman senator, a veritable Cicero, deep down he sees himself as Alaric the Visigoth or Attila the Hun. His job is to sweep into the Chas Mahal, force the snooty civil servants to prostrate themselves in terror at his feet and send some goodies back to the tribal homelands of south Kerry or north Tipperary.
And since he is haunted by the fear that he may soon be expelled from the Capitol, he grabs the booty as fast as he can. This may make the operation rather obvious and unsubtle, but, he reckons, politics is no place for subtlety. Consider, for example, the current Government and its flagrant abuse of the decentralisation programme. The idea of decentralising the offices of State and governmental agencies to provincial towns is a good one, particularly in the present circumstances - with Dublin becoming hopelessly congested it makes sense to move some of the bureaucratic apparatus to towns more in need of an injection of population and funds. Decentralisation could, and should, be a key part of the spatial strategy that is supposed to be developed as part of the national plan, allowing the Government to make rational interventions in the spread of development.
That, though, is Roman thinking. To the Alarics and Attilas of our present administration, it misses the point. Using Government policy as an instrument for the long-term development of the nation is all very well for the self-important gentlemen in togas, but it makes no sense whatever to the fellow in the wolfskin overcoat with the bloody broadsword in his hand. For him, the point is to grab whatever is going and send it back to the tribal homeland. So, brazenly and without shame, the Government has been regarding the decentralisation programme as a Visigoth regards a villa full of exquisite ornaments. Never mind the artistic value, just rip them out and send them home to safety before they can stop us. Melt them down and haul them away.
WE are not, of course, supposed to notice any of this. We are supposed to believe the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, just happened to be struck one day last year with the idea that it would be good to decentralise the Civil Legal Aid Board and that by an extraordinary coincidence, the ideal location just happened to be Cahirciveen in his own constituency.
Then, in a series of coincidences so strange that they ought to feature on The X-Files, Mr Cowen discovered, just as he was leaving the Department of Health, that the best place for the National Disease Surveillance Centre would be Tullamore in his own constituency, and Michael Smith had the inspired idea of moving the headquarters of Civil Defence and two sections of the Army's administration to Tipperary.
Presumably, now that he has moved to Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen will have the brilliant idea of decentralising the Irish embassy to Russia from Moscow to Portlaoise.
The media tends to be indulgent towards such strokes and the Opposition is loath to attack them for fear of alienating the good voters of Kerry, Laois, Offaly and Tipperary. The attitude that underlies them, however, is no laughing matter.
For what these ministers and the Cabinet that has gone along with their actions are saying is that the State and its institutions are essentially the property of individual ministers, to be placed at the service of their careers.
A policy that should be part of a long-term developmental strategy is made subject to the short-term goal of topping the poll in one or other constituency at the next election. Institutions that ought to be part of the emergence of a healthy, independent-minded civil society are being reminded that they can be disposed of at the whim of small-minded politicians.
The public good, yet again, is sacrificed to private ends and the pathetic culture of the raider-politician is given a new lease of life.
fotoole@irish-times.ie