Defining 'greed'
• If a picture might paint a thousand words, the recent picture of our Taoiseach being patted on the head by Nicolas Sarkozy speaks volumes, at least in respect of how we stand in Europe.
Apparently the days of proud statesmen like Lemass and De Valera are no more. This is perhaps the saddest reality of all, for arguably the greatest need in Ireland at the moment is one of leadership.
Whatever one might say of their policies, the statesmen of our past would be unlikely to be depicted in a manner that would cause either a mammy or a people to cringe with embarrassment.
Arguably the thing Ireland's leadership has consistently lacked for the past two decades has been leadership by example. A little bit of "do as I do" would be welcome, rather than the all too familiar and all too evangelical "do as I say".
If image were not enough, the Taoiseach's fingering of the 'greed' of Irish people as being the cause of our present economic disaster is salt in the festering wounds of our bank bailouts and unemployment.
This is of course, the front before our European paymasters and yet in a fawning address to the people of Ireland we were assured by Mr Kenny that this crisis was "not of their making".
In Davos, the Taoiseach stated: "The extent of personal credit, personal wealth created on credit, was done between people and banks -- a system that spawned greed to a point where it just went out of control completely with a spectacular crash."
If our Taoiseach wishes to refer to the greed of the people, he should be willing to define what he means.
Surely the families who were desperate to buy a home during the boom and borrowed to buy a gardenless box in a high-density urban development that is now worth a mere fraction of its cost are not being described as greedy?
It was our largely unchanged political system that provided zero regulation to bankers. It was Government that allowed private individuals to amass debts and loans of inconceivable "billions". It was the Government that actively encouraged corporate greed to rot the heart of our national economy.
Greed can be easily defined as 'taking more than one needs' and in this sense we are all greedy.
If the Taoiseach himself is not greedy, then we must assume that he needs €200,000 per annum to live.
RTE presenters are, of course, not greedy but some of them need in the region of €750,000 per annum to live.
Many members of my own 'ungreedy' profession struggle on with far in excess of €500,000 per annum.
According to the Department of Social Protection, a single unemployed person needs no more than €180 per week to live. Relative to this definition of need, our Taoiseach and many more are far from swapping halos.
Dr Marcus de Brun
Rush, Co Dublin
Irish Independent
