Gravy train still stops at all the right stations

Tuesday 31 May 2011

Fintan O’Toole – Irish Times, Tuesday 31st 2011

Ivor Callely will get €63,000 a year for the rest of
his life yet Richard Bruton targets the poorest workers
WHAT IS the price of a litre of milk? How much does a
sliced pan cost? Are baked beans cheaper in Aldi or in
Dunnes? What’s the typical bus fare between a working-
class city suburb and an industrial estate?

There are people who know the answers to these questions
and there are those who don’t. And the most nauseating
sound in Ireland is the people who don’t, pontificating
about the people who do. It is smug, sleek people who
live in a bubble of comfort and self-satisfaction deciding
that the problem in this bloody country is that the women
who clean their offices are paid too much.

This is a State in which Ivor Callely, who is so smart he
couldn’t quite fig