Those wise people among you who catch PAT+JUDE on Youtube will probably be aware that I have a thing about Áras an Uachtráin. It has 92 rooms. Even if the President brought an enormous family – say 18 kids – with him or her, there’d still be a lot of unused rooms. When you consider that the occupants for the last 14 years have been just two people – Michael D and his wife -the thing moves into the realms of absurdity. Michael D’s successor, Catherine Connolly, will bring her husband and that’s about it. Doesn’t it say something that the head of state lives in a house grossly overlarge, waited on hand and foot, while an appalling shortage of housing confronts Irish society?
And then there’s the pay and pensions question. Michael D Higgins got €350,000 a year for being president. Nice work if you can get it. In Britain the Prime Minister gets a measly £170,000 and has a job that could melt under their feet at any time: there are no 7 or 14-year guarantees that come with the job. Ask Liz Truss if you doubt me.
So I have two questions: what sort of job does the Irish President do that the public gives them super-comfortable bed and board, , and a really big luxury chauffeur-driven car?
Sure, we like to think that the President of Ireland doesn’t go around with the arse hanging out of his trousers or sleeps in a house with an out-door toilet. But lathering that kind of money on him or her,and that size of living quarters , on that kind of salary and pension, is surely as near as we want to get to having Michael D lean out a window of the Áras and sing “The working class/Can kiss my ass/ I’ve got the foreman’s job at last!”
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