The Cabinet - Drunk on Power?

It has been interesting to see lately how the big topic of discussion has changed from the economic meltdown to just how drunk the Cabinet is on any given day.

This has finally gone mainstream, with Taoiseach, Brian Cowen's interview with Jody Corcoran in the Sunday Independent, when he claimed he was able to handle his level of alcohol consumption and was "all right." Truly, we are now in GUBU territory, when the serving head of the administration has to reassure us that his drinking problem isn't getting in the way of doing his job.

On any bog-standard day in Irish politics, he might be right. Trouble is, we are now in the middle of a financial and fiscal crisis that has Ireland in a starring role in all kinds of apocalyptic headlines across the world. This, perhaps for the first time since independence, requires leadership of an extraordinary kind. But above all, it requires a crystal-clear, disciplined intelligence.

If you were to notice Brian Cowen in your local pub, you would clearly label him as a certain type of dysfunctional individual with 'problems'. The fact that Fianna Fail in their collective stupidity have made him Taoiseach, shouldn't blind us to the facts staring us in the face. This is a man who, on every conceivable level, is unfit to be prime minister and, indeed, unfit to be holding down any responsible position until he receives the proper level of care and attention that a man in his state should receive.

The fact that other senior members of the cabinet are also reported to be drunk on duty, tells us all we need to know about the mystifying sense of 'drift' in this government's response to the current crisis. Indeed, it has come to the point where the President should start taking an active interest in her ministers' ability to do the job for which they were given their seals of office. It is the very least the public need her to do to ensure that Ireland has a functioning government. We didn't elect these people to roll around drunk and then nurse hangovers while we pay them to work.