No room for debate when politics is only personal

Poor Royston Brady! He's finding out the hard way that Fianna Fáil loves a winner, but doesn't have much time for those who fail to step up to the mark. Whatever "promises" were given to him about his election expenses, there's a clear precedent that the party only pays a certain amount, equally for all candidates. Anything over and above that is raised by the candidates themselves, with their own election campaign teams.

But the whole saga raises serious questions about the nature of politics in Ireland, and the way that campaigns are financed.

Fianna Fáil began very much as Sinn Féin presently are. That is, it was the party which put forward a team who combined together to maximise the party vote. Of course, it is much easier to maintain this high principle when a party is only putting forward one candidate in a multi-seat constituency.

But when there are several candidates involved and more than one seat potentially to be won, it has been the pattern of Irish politics that internal competition becomes more important than the competition between parties.

For example, it is most unlikely that Fine Gael will get more than one seat in Kildare North's four-seater in the next election, and unlikely too that it will fail to get any seat. The real question is whether that seat will go to incumbent Bernard Durkan or to by-election challenger Damien Scully. The two will slog it out – at their own expense – while the party looks on.

Sometimes this internal competition is so fierce that it gives a party a seat bonus. In the European elections of June 1979, a veritable blood-letting between two Labour candidates in Dublin saw both Michael O'Leary and John O'Connell elected with Labour's highest percentage vote ever in the capital.

But what little role ideology or politics play in all this is well illustrated by the fact that subsequently O'Leary joined Fine Gael and O'Connell joined Fianna Fáil.

It's personal ambition that is the main driving force for most TDs rather than commitment to any specific framework of political belief, and as the three main parties get closer to each other in policy terms, personality is about all that's left to argue about.

Such a political system obviously fails to satisfy the thinking voter, and this is the niche that is being exploited by small parties like Sinn Féin and the Greens and by more and more independents. These latter, in particular, may well be motivated by ambition also, but they're outside the loop and so have an appeal for the increasing number of voters who are disillusioned by our present system.

This disillusionment is likely to be increased by the news that Fianna Fáil is going to revive some sort of Taca system. Younger readers may not remember those heady days back in the Sixties when a mere £100 bought businessmen special access to government ministers. Today's going price apparently is to be a total of €4,500. But perhaps if we take inflation into account that might be a bargain.

The Taca image did a lot of damage to Fianna Fáil in the 1960s: it seemed to emphasise the party's disengagement from ideals and its surrender to mammon, to the brash vulgarity of the nouveau riche.

I'm an ancien pauvre man myself, but look how irrelevant Michael Noonan's commitment became that Fine Gael wouldn't accept corporate donations – after corporate cheques had floated back and forth unwanted in the face of one of our interminable tribunals. And, for all its shouting, remember the Labour Party's £500 dinners in the early nineties, with guaranteed access to the then minister for finance, Ruairí Quinn.

And this brings us back to Royston. Because it's not just a question of Royston's blighted career and failed ambitions. The European Union impinges on our democratic rights in every facet of our lives, and not least on the actual sovereignty of our hard won Republic. At this very time we are in the throes of a process of establishing a European Constitution, about which Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour are in broad agreement.

Now only states need constitutions, but all three parties soothingly assure us that this isn't yet another step towards a federal state, though Fine Gael sees nothing wrong with such a state, Labour thinks it would be a counter-weight to the United States and Fianna Fáil are as committed to national sovereignty as they are to neutrality.

But where's the debate? In the mainstream media, almost none. A welter of pro-EU propaganda, with an occasional gesture to the other side to cover up the unbalanced nature of the coverage; but nothing whatever like the real debate that is happening in France.

Of course, the French vote will actually decide the issue: there'll be no second run there. But here it's all smoke and mirrors and unpaid debts. No wonder we need Taca.

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity