Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week

Dan O’Brien must be living in a different Ireland to everybody else

If a foreigner with no knowledge of this country had spent last week here attempting to understand our general political orientation, they might well have concluded that we are a nation of leftists and reflexive statists. On some of the most discussed issues of the week – housing, health and welfare – far more voices were heard in the broadcast media calling for the government to address all of our ills. Many of these voices held private enterprise in suspicion, if not contempt.

That contempt for the private sector. Ruins my experience every time I turn on the tv, the radio, or pick up a newspaper.

Meanwhile, the new Minister for Transport has received a bit of a shock on discovering that public sector workers don’t just work 9-5, and do a lot of unpaid work in the evenings and at weekends.

My first working day as Minister for Transport was on the Sabbath. Slave drivers, these public servants. Or at least some of them.

That’s a fine way for a minister to raise morale. Suggest most of his workers, and most workers in the public sector, are slackers. Brilliant.