“Good riddance to them and their greedy Thatcherite ways!” she declared over a gin and tonic, when the Progressive Democrats closed up shop. Her leftie credentials are solid, as you can tell from her attendance at the Ivana Bacik fundraiser and the “Remember Savita” sticker placed elegantly on the back of her 5 series coupe.

The language rolls easily of the tongue, about “social justice”, “investment in communities”, “Social capital”, in fact almost anything with the word “social” in it. She’s secretary of the Labour Women’s Group in Dublin South East. The West Wing Box set holds pride of place on her DVD shelf, and The Guardian is always placed face up on the coffee table, under a box of fairtrade organic cookies. She is left wing and proud.

Not that her accountant would know, of course. Remember those filthy PDs and their tax cuts? They were quickly trousered, and a “little getaway place for Gavin and I” in Southern Portugal emerged. When the PDs and Fianna Fail cut Capital Gains Tax, her socialist conscience seemed to play second fiddle to the opportunity to flip those investment properties in Lucan and Ballymun.

For some reason, she seems unaware of the fact that the Revenue Commissioners will happily accept back any undesired taxcuts gratefully. Even filthy PD ones. Watch her reaction to funding social spending by taxing unearned profits on private residential properties: it’s like watching Newt Gingrich in high heels.

“How are you Tom, are you well? Yeah, good, good, no, can’t complain…well, didn’t I get pulled over by the Guards this morning…yeah…breathalysed…wouldn’t you think with all the murders and paedophiles on every street corner they’d have better things to do with their time…sure I’d been at the Bourke removal, you know the young fella, yeah, that’s right, him and six other young lads went into a ditch at the weekend. Stone dead. Jaysus, them roads are terrible, lethal they are, taking young lives like that, and them only out for the few jars, it’s very sad…did you hear the news, by the way? The brother got off that medical disciplinary thing…yeah, that’s right, some other doctor, some foreign fella, objected to him operating because he’d had a few scoops the night before…did you ever hear the like of it…sure as the brother says, a few porters help him do his job better, you know, calms the nerves…anyway, apparently he picked up a scalpel rather than a syringe and this English fella went bananas and ratted on him. Disgraceful carry on. Your young one’s going in for her operation this week, isn’t she? I’ll be saying a prayer to St Anthony for her. Did you hear Maura’s Sean, you know, her eldest, got the Air Traffic Control job…yeah…you want to see the pension!…yeah, he failed a few of the tests, crashed two jumbo jets into each other over Mullingar on the computer stimulator! But doesn’t Maura know the minister and a word was had in the right ear, apparently the computer thing got deleted, if you know what I mean! I’d stay away from the airport for a few weeks, all the same, until he gets the hang of the ropes, and that. Anyway, see you over the Christmas!”

Nothing to do with me, Guv.

He is almost single-handedly responsible for the state of Irish politics. Mostly because he suffers from that endemic self delusion that seems to be hard wired into Irish DNA. Put him in front of a pollster or an academic and he’ll give textbook answers about the need for democratic accountability and check and balances and proper scrutiny of legislation. He’s a model citizen.

Until he votes, because when he does, none of those lofty criteria apply. When he votes, it’s for the local fella who delivers for the local parish. Legislator? Scrutiniser of executives? The local fella could be chopping up people (in another parish, of course) and eating them with a fine Chianti and some Lima beans and he’d still vote for him, as long as he got the pension for the brother in law who’s only 27.

When it comes down to it, he wants someone else to vote for proper economic management and world class health standards and a professionally run country.

And by the way, the irony isn’t that he doesn’t vote for it himself. The irony is that he actually gets angry when other people won’t vote for it.

Who do those people think they are, coming down to his level? Just look at the state they have the country in, the bastards.

If one were to ask a scientist to come up with a device to measure false outrage in Irish politics, you would expect the needle to at least reach 50% most of the time. It’s hardly surprising, of course, in a system as centrally dictatorial as ours. When most elected officeholders either have no power or do not want to use it (something you don’t hear as much about) they resort to spewing out vast quantities of emotion-load guff about “dignity” and “esteem” of one group of vested interests or another.

Take almost any issue to do with old people. You can play bingo with the avalanche of grovelling pander that comes out of politicians when anyone suggests that senior citizens carry their fair share. “They have worked all their lives!” is a favourite. Some of them have. About the same proportion of non-senior citizens who have also worked their whole lives.

Then you get the “the measure of a civilised society is how it treats its old people.” Again, this is true. But if you squeeze “financially comfortable with mortgage paid off” into the gap between “old” and “people”, it doesn’t quite sound the same.

But let’s call the truth here. Dignity me eye. We all know why politicians are terrified of old people. They vote. And fair play to them, because at least old people are smart enough to scare the shite out of politicians and use the system to get what they want. For that they deserve admiration.

But please: spare us the puffed out political chests and the “look at my inflated social conscience as I parade it down the street” from politicians who start to believe their own speeches.

Because in this age of media accessibility, it’ll come back to haunt you. This is what happens:

Sure, this isn’t fair at all. Didn’t he do his bit in three county finals and two All-Irelands, and now here he is in Dail Eireann and fellas are asking him about abortion and laws and the like? What’s it got to do with him?

He was sent by the good people of the parish to get St. Handout’s grounds better drained, an extension for the Old Folk’s Home in Ballygrasping, and to get them fancy Dublin lads off the backs of the ordinary people going on about feces in the drinking water and other high falutin’ notions.

Now they’re asking him about laws about what now? Ladies private parts and what goes on it them? Sure what business is that of his, he said on the local radio, until Father Jude rang him up and told him that it is very much the state’s business what goes on in there and had he been reading dirty foreign muck like The Irish Times and Supreme Court judgements? So, you want me to vote for legislation, then, he asks, and your man in the collar goes ballistic telling him on no account should he darken the door of  Our Lady of Perpetual Curtain Twitching if he does.

He’s completely confused. There should be some sort of special body set up to look at legislation, debate and vote on it,  and stop troubling ordinary Dail Deputies like himself. Sure hasn’t he enough to be doing? There’s that poor woman in Feckerstown whose son keeps getting harassed by the guards just because they keep finding him, by pure coincidence, in the driving seat of stolen cars. Or that man in Goonyaboya who the county council are discriminating against because he keeps putting dead cattle out with the bins for collection. He’s more important things to be worrying about.