Scapegoat? No, just an arrogant woman blind to her faults
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Tuesday June 26 2007
THERE is a big difference between self assurance and self-serving arrogance, and also between a principled stand, and a pig-headed stance, but someone needs to sit Beverley Flynn down and spell them out for her - presuming she could be bothered to listen to someone else's opinion.
Once again yesterday we were treated to the Mayo TD's views on her very favourite battle: Flynn vs The Rest of the World.
After news that she had agreed to settle her debt with RTE, which arose from her failed libel battle with the national broadcaster, Battling Bev sallied forth on the air to sound her own trumpet once again.
One would think that a public representative who had just undergone the humiliating and unedifying experience of being dragged into court to face bankruptcy proceedings - which if successful could put her career in jeopardy - and who had subsequently launched a constitutional challenge to the bankruptcy suit before then executing a Belgrano-style U-turn and opting to cough up to RTE instead, would be a little ashamed and more than a little publicity-shy.
But most public representatives aren't like Flynn, a woman whose neck contains more brass than the Artane Band in Croker on All Ireland final day, and a politician who surely must have received not only the Taoiseach's backing, but also his Teflon TD mantle.
Yet there she was, brazen as you like on Radio One, refusing to utter that all-important five-letter word - not "money", or "daddy", but "sorry". In the Gospel According to Beverley: "I never believed I did anything wrong," she declared. "I have always believed that I have worked within the law." She reckoned she was ¨singled out and in some ways scapegoated for what, in effect, was bank policy".
She also said that the settlement with RTE - believed to be less than half of the outstanding amount of €2.28m - would "cost me my entire income for the rest of my working life at the end of the day I have finite resources".
The last remark, of course, begs the question - how, from her "finite resources" was she planning to fund what would have been in all likelihood a lengthy and costly constitutional challenge? Cash from the tooth fairy, perhaps? Or a dig-out from friends?
Her remarks about being a "scapegoat" ring equally hollow. In the Mayowoman's mantra, she is a plucky battler, misunderstood and manipulated and cast unfairly into the political wilderness by Fianna Fail.
This is disingenuous to put it mildly. She was a smart 21-year-old when she worked at National Irish Bank, the daughter of a powerful politician and the scion of a political dynasty that exudes a sense of entitlement with every breath taken. Far from being the "class act" of her father's depiction, she has no class at all. By refusing to see anything reprehensible about any aspect of her behaviour when even the highest court in the land begged to differ, she proves herself unworthy of holding the office to which she was elected.
Now just imagine Beverley as a minister, bulldozing past differing opinions to hers by following her lifelong path of "my way or the highway", and refusing to accept responsibility for any decisions that went awry.
The Taoiseach has said he was spoiled for choice earlier this month when selecting junior ministers from the ranks of his own party. He doesn't need Flynn's brand of self-interested hypocrisy in government, and neither does an electorate wearied of tales of sharp practice trickling endlessly from tribunals.
For this TD, sorry always seems to be the hardest word. She would probably agree with the prominent American who once declared: "I have my faults, but being wrong ain't one of them."
Who was the prominent American? Jimmy Hoffa.
