Inside politics:A series of Government decisions over the past few days has demonstrated how remote our leaders have become from the lives of the majority of citizens. There has been a stark illustration of a disconnect between the rulers and the ruled that may be a consequence of the drift of Irish democracy into a virtual one-party State.
The decision by the Government to accept large pay and pension increases for Ministers, judges and top civil servants, at a time when the economy is heading into a downturn and people are being lectured about the need for pay restraint, is simply astonishing. The fact that it came just a day after the gravy train of committee perks for a large swathe of the Dáil only makes it worse. On the same day as the Taoiseach became one of the best paid leaders in the world, over 400,000 drivers, most of them young people in their 20s, were told they would be banned from the roads next week. The failure to take proper account of the impact this decision has on the lives of so many people showed an even greater disregard for the ordinary citizen than the exorbitant pay awards for the political and public service elite. What so infuriated people about guillotine on drivers with provisional licences is that the State has so dismally failed learner drivers for decades.
It has presided over a shambolic testing system that has left people no option but to take to the roads on provisional licences.
Whatever official figures say, the fact is that a great many people in large urban areas are still waiting for six months and often longer for a test.
The same State that has demonstrated a complete inability to run an efficient driver-testing system is now threatening to prosecute people who don't have full licences. Of course, the reason most of them are still on provisional licences is precisely because the testing system is so woeful. Joseph Heller could hardly have devised a more perfect example of Catch 22.
The Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey tried to take the heat out of the controversy yesterday by suggesting that the law would not be enforced immediately, as had been planned, and gardaí would use their discretion. If anything, that only makes matters worse by dragging the law into disrepute. The root of the problem is the driver-testing system, and until that is reformed root and branch there is no point clamping down on provisional licences. What is truly remarkable is that a Government which has been in office for 10 years doesn't appear to grasp the basic nature of the problem.
After recent dismal performances by the Irish soccer and rugby teams it was widely suggested that our highly paid professional sportsmen are out of touch with lives of ordinary fans.
At least the sportsmen have the excuse that they are, by necessity, cut off from real life and live in a cocoon. By contrast, politicians are supposed to live in the real world, but it is increasingly obvious that they do not.
No further illustration of that is required than the Taoiseach's straight-faced and almost indignant defence of the fact that he is getting a pay rise of €38,000, to bring his salary to €310,000 a year. Mr Ahern will now be better paid than George Bush, Gordon Brown or Nicolas Sarkozy and that is surely the benchmark for comparison rather than the inflated salaries paid to those at the top of the private sector.
The latest pay rise for the Taoiseach and his Ministers is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the political system looking after itself is concerned. After the election we had the creation of extra junior ministerial positions to ensure there were more perks to be handed out. Then on Wednesday came the announcement of the Oireachtas committees. A total of 23 committees were set up, each with a chair paid over €19,000 on top of their salary of about €100,000. There are also 23 paid vice-chairs and 23 paid whips. Then there are the nine members of the Oireachtas Commission who are also paid over €19,000 extra, never mind extra pay for the Leas Cheann Comhairle, the assistant Government whip, the party whips, and the chairs of a number of sub-committees yet to be established.
When the Ministers, the junior Ministers and all others with some kind of perk or other are added up, the figure comes out at around 130 members of the 166- member Dáil having extra pay on top of an already generous salary.
On top of that again they are all entitled to unvouched, untaxed expenses which average out around €50,000 a year, with those living farthest away from Dublin getting most and those in the capital getting least.
Just to cap it all, Irish politicians have what is probably the most generous pension system in the world, based as it is on what is probably the most generous public service pension system in the world. TDs and Senators qualify for a full pension after 20 years, which is half the time a public servant requires.
They will then get half a TD's or Senator's salary for the rest of their lives. The pension increases in line with pay increases for serving members.
The net result of their very good pay and extraordinary pensions is that Ministers and TDs have no idea of the struggle that the majority of people have to earn a decent salary and make some kind of pension provision for themselves. One of the glaringly obvious issues that has not received anything like the proper debate it requires in this country is pensions. The main reason for that is that politicians and senior public servants are so far removed from the hard realities facing everybody else.
Neither is it any wonder that problems of traffic and public transport do not get proper attention because Ministers have the extraordinary perk of a car and a driver around the clock. To cap it all, they are allowed to use the bus lanes and are thus insulated from the world of commuting.
There is an obvious argument for paying politicians a decent salary, but over the past decade or so the salary itself and the myriad of perks that go with it have put them among the elite of income earners. It is hardly any wonder they don't know what is happening to people in the world outside the political bubble.