Public Gets Government It Deserves

national | miscellaneous | other press Sunday October 15, 2006 04:52 by Anchor

Poll shows voters love Bertie

An amazing poll in today's (Oct 15 2006) Sunday Tribune shows that the public are very supportive of the Bertie Ahern even though he received over 60,000 euro from businessmen in the 1990s -- while at the same time a majority believe the planning tribunal's reputation is damaged after the details of the taoiseach's loan and gift emerged!!

The Sunday Tribune-Milward Brown poll in today's edition of the paper is fascinating. It shows just how the public are willing to forgive Bertie Ahern for accepting money from businessmen and friends in the 1990s when he was a cabinet minister. At the same time, in the story written by journalist John Burke, the public believes that the reputation of the tribunal into planning corruption has been affected negatively by the media revelations of the taoiseach's financial dealings.

The implications of this poll is huge. There isn't any proof or evidence offered so far to give any indication that Bertie Ahern's details were leaked to the Irish Times by anyone connected to the tribunal. In fact, as John Burke writes, a government minister last week admitted, when brought before the tribunal's judges, that he couldn't back up his suggestion on radio that the source of the leak was "well known".

If a majority of voters (54 percent) strangely percieve that the tribunal's reputation is damaged by this affair, despite the absence of any supporting evidence, yet they are still willing to forgive and forget Bertie Ahern's acceptance of money from businessmen and want him to be their next leader --- then do the Irish public have any apparent apetite to reform governance in their own country??