Harney Humdinger of the month award goes to...

I DON'T know if any of the Irish passers-by saw The Political Party on TV3 yesterday (Sunday) with Minister for Social and Family Affairs, wee Seamus Brennan, but one of the subjects of the show has hit all the breaking news websites over the day. In fact I am pretty positive it will make the tabloids tomorrow.

It was concerning the Children’s Allowance and Ursuala Hannigan was trying to tease something out of Minister Brennan, who dodged and duck his way out of saying anything than he wanted to.

The crux of it was that Brennan said his department has been looking at modifying the payments to include something extra for the 10-odd per cent of children who despite Ireland’s wealth and prosperity live in poverty.

He said there was no date on it, he didn’t know how it would be done, or how much it would be, he knew little other than he was going to so something to bring children out of this poverty.

Firstly and I must get this out of the way because it is not why I am writing, but I have to say HA to that.

What a joke! Sometimes you watch things like this with a Fianna Failer spouting whatever spin they have been briefed with and you wait and wait for the thunderbolt to come and strike them down there and then.

It never happens.

Many of the 10 per cent (I am not sure of the exact figure) of children are in households headed up by a single parent.

And it was Fianna Fail who recently implemented a wide range of social welfare changes which will keep many of these people in abject poverty. What the hell, many of them don’t vote anyway, why worry?

Some of these changes include lengthening the time someone has to be signing on before they can start a back to work scheme, there are many, many more. [Google ‘Savage 16’ to see them all.]

Many of these changes if implemented a couple of years ago would have ensured that I would have never got to college, rented a flat, or started work.

Smart move!

The Government is being battered now and rightly so. So wee Brennan tried once again to show the caring face of the Government and spoke of introducing extra somethings for those who need it.

Great but I wouldn’t hold my breath for its introduction. It’s probably just one of those Fianna Fail promises, a bit like leprechaun gold, something of a yearned for myth.

But the main reason why I wanted to post about The Political Party was that apart from the fact that it was Ursula Halligan who kept going on about would the Children’s Allowance be means tested, not wee Brennan, yet that is what the media choose to use as its bite all day.

Did they watch a different programme?

Then at one point Halligan asked him would he be worried the money would be spent in the pub.

Seriously!

Aye that’s like the time I was on the dole, with no money whatsoever, no money for bills, no money for clothes and we lived on stew for the week. Despite all that you would always find me in the pub spending some of that leprechaun gold.

So the Harney Humdinger of the month award goes to Ursuala Halligan.


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