Let's start with a correction to a previous column. And this gives us an opportunity to bring you some good news, some indication that things are better than we thought they were. It was the week in which we suffered flooding. It was the week in which the French Thierryfied us -- but things are surely looking up for this great little nation.

Why? Well, almost a year ago, we made the point that John Bruton was not just on a nice little earner as EU ambassador to the USA, he was also pulling in a ministerial pension of €89,777. Unfortunately, I was grossly (if inadvertently) misleading the readers of this newspaper. I was using the latest figures to hand, and they were somewhat out of date.

It's my pleasant duty to inform you that the latest government finance accounts show that John Bruton is now on a ministerial pension of €97,947. And if memory serves, John is also on a TD pension of around €52,000. I'm not sure if he's on a pension from the EU for his sterling service in Washington, but I'm sure he has some lovely memories.

Unfortunately, last week John failed to get the new job he was after, president of the EU. Damn and blast. Perhaps we can find him a nixer. Maybe something like Alan Dukes has, remember Alan? He was another hapless Fine Gael leader who got the bum's rush.

You will recall that when the banks went belly-up the Government urgently needed help. All hands to the wheel. So, some trustworthy folk consented to come to the aid of a nation in peril -- people like Alan Dukes and Ray MacSharry, Dick Spring and other worthies. They accepted positions as "public-interest directors" on the boards of various banks. Watchdogs for the citizens. That's what I like to see, the true patriotism of the public servant.

Turns out Alan Dukes is on a fee scale of about €99,000 for sitting on the board of Anglo Irish Bank. And this is on top of his €44,000 ministerial pension. And his €54,000 TD pension. And a Happy Christmas to you too, Alan, and a prosperous New Year.

Joe Walsh, a Fianna Fail ex-minister who was somehow making do on a ministerial pension of €73,000, is now our watchdog on the board of Bank of Ireland, on a fee scale of €78,000. Ray MacSharry is down for €56,000 from the board of Irish Life. Ray is used to emoluments from several other boards, a 40-grand pension for being a minister and 52-grand for being a TD.

Now, this is all joyful news -- clearly we live in a wealthy country where the "fundamentals of the economy are sound" (isn't that what Mary Harney loves to chortle?) and we can afford a rock-star lifestyle for our politicians.

Oh, dear, a late bulletin has just come in -- it seems we're not so wealthy. In fact, the Government is about to kick the bejayzus out of an already sinking economy, taking €4 billion out of it. They'll drive up unemployment and make the budget deficit even worse (when they started cutting they thought the deficit would be 6.5 per cent, but their policies managed to double that).

Oddly enough, we can still afford to continue the rock-star lifestyle of the politicians. Charlie McCreevy, the financial genius behind the tax-break culture, is on a ministerial pension of about €73,000, with another €52,000 or so coming in his TD's pension. This is on top of his €230,000 EU salary.

All our top politicians are in the quarter of a million category. Plus generous expenses, and everyone's still got a limo and free city-centre parking for life. It's a lovely job, being a minister, if it wasn't for the door occasionally falling off your helicopter. If you're a retired taoiseach you have a team of gardai driving you around until the day you pop your clogs.

Are we really so rich we can afford to pay Mary McAleese €323,000 a year, on top of her €317,000 allowance, plus room and board? She couldn't maybe get by on €100,000? And Mary Robinson is entitled to a pension of €150,000 a year, and a senator's pension of €36,000.

There are two Irelands. During the boom we grew used to politicians playing rock star -- complete with limo, helicopter and an entourage of consultants. Fleets of helicopters ferried the vulgar rich from racecourse to yacht to party mansion, all sustained by the tax-break culture created by the obsequious politicians to whom the rich made "legitimate political donations".

Meanwhile, there was another Ireland, in which the elderly lingered and died on trolleys in hospital corridors, where the young were taught in prefab shacks. Where cystic fibrosis patients died prematurely for want of the bog standard isolation units for which they had been pleading for years.

It was an Ireland in which two-thirds of workers earned less than €35,000 a year, a smaller number did reasonably well and a small cabal of cute hoors of no discernable talent borrowed and spent billions. And where the bankers paid themselves bonuses for lending those billions.

The boom came and went and the trolleys and the prefabs remain. For some, all is changed, changed utterly. Long-term unemployment looms and emigration for many more. For others, the ball goes on.

True enough, the vulgar rich have been forced to read the small print at the bottom of their gambling dockets, the bit about how "the value of your investment may fall as well as rise and past performance is no guarantee of future results".

They thought they were playing a game with a double-headed coin. No matter how it came down, they couldn't lose. And now the bill has come in and they're demanding that we pull on the green jersey and help them out "for the sake of the country".

The reason Government policy has been making things worse -- and will continue to do so -- is that it strives to resuscitate a set-up that isn't sustainable. Rejecting all the traditional emergency remedies used by capitalism in trouble (much less any radical response) the Government recklessly seeks to rescue the world in which they felt comfortable. They and their cronies know no other. And in the process, they're bringing the rest of us down with them.

It's a set-up in which a banker accepting a 500 grand job is seen as a patriot making a sacrifice. A set-up where every enterprise must have a top layer that consumes a multiple of the rewards allotted to those below. A set-up in which the rewards and the social rights of those who labour hard for decades are seen as expendable, while the rewards of the elite are sacrosanct.

A set-up in which we are assured we must pay a fortune (plus bonuses) for the services of unique individuals -- who then run the enterprise into the ground and depart with big pensions. And the new geniuses belly up to the bar and demand the big bucks.

Remind me again why we've put €4 billion into the zombie Anglo Irish Bank, with maybe another €4 billion to come? (These figures, you will note, match the amounts the Government is about to slash from the real economy, this year and next.) Remind me why we need buccaneer bankers, instead of retail bankers, prudent and reasonably paid?

Dismissive of the risks of social instability, the politicians slash the real economy in an effort to rescue the reckless, selfish, unsustainable set-up they knew and loved. And when we complain they point fingers and accuse us of lack of patriotism.

- Gene Kerrigan

Sunday Independent