Trade in gombeens
Ireland's new currency should be called the 'gombeen', in honour of our greatest character trait. The one gombeen coin will depict Charlie Haughey, for old time's sake. The five gombeen note will pay tribute to an image of the Galway tent. Ten gombeens will show our genius bankers, the night they bamboozled Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan into having this State underwrite the bank losses of Irish and European casino banks. Twenty gombeens will have an image of an actual tiger, to remind our grandchildren that we once thought of ourselves as financial whizz kids.
Pride of place on the new 50 gombeen note should go to the plain old Irish voters, for all the years they used their vote in exchange for a stroke from a local ludramon politician, never realising that they would get their comeuppance one day.
There will have to be a limit on how many gombeens each person can donate to a political party, but ways will be found around the rules, of course; this is Ireland, after all. Politicians will be overpaid 100,000 gombeens per year for sitting in the Dail, gobbling like turkeys at one another. We won't bother trying to make politicians behave in a mature manner, because, like night follows day, the gombeen will itself collapse before too long, as this is Ireland after all.
Declan Doyle
Lisdowney, Kilkenny
Irish Independent
