It seems Mary Lou McDonald touched a sore spot on Simon Harris’s soul on the TV debate last night. She was talking about the state’s treatment of children, no doubt having in mind the Easter Proclamation’s line about “cherishing all the children of the nation equally”. Mary Lou spoke of the Dublin government’s “faux concern for the future of children” and the need to challenge it.
It was at this point that Simon Harris’s selective outrage boiled out of the pot and all over the cooker.
“How dare you? How dare you accuse anyone of faux concern for children. Who do you think you are that you have some kind of monopoly on compassion? I don’t know any member of Dáil Eireann or any political party or any candidate running for election who has a faux concern for children.”
The last time I heard that furious tone I was fourteen and facing up to the Dean in St Columb’s College. So did Simon have a point? Was his “or any political party or any candidate for election” justified?
Well, by their fruits shall you know them.
Latest figures showed 13000 people and 4000 children were homeless in the South. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that, since Fine Gael were in government for the last fourteen years, they weren’t wildly concerned about this moral stain in the state’s soul. It’s a bit like hitting someone on the head with a piece of lead piping and then bending down to enquire anxiously “Are you all right, mate? That’s a shocking gash you’ve got on your head. Tsk, tsk, tsk”.
Although we need to be fair: Simon has shown a genuine concern for Mrs McGahon’s son John, who Simon has insisted on supporting. Even though Mrs McGahon’s boy John got a man called Breen White on the ground and punched the lights out of him. Breen had to be hospitalised. Last night Simon told us several times that Mrs McGahon’s boy was tried and acquitted by a jury and he was right. What unfortunately slipped Simon’s mind was the 39,000 euro the High Court awarded the victim of Mrs McGahon’s boy. Despite all this, though, Simon has insisted Mrs B’s boy must be allowed to be a Fine Gael candidate in the coming election.
Has any enterprising journalist asked Mrs McGahon what word she’d use for Simon’s concern? Just sayin’, like…
MUST WE “Pardon the French”
Faux for phoney, false, pretended is a bit precious.
I suppose FAUX PA -ISM is pretended paternal concern for the nation’s children.
By advocates of abortion?