Poor old George Lee. No sooner had he thrown his hat in the ring and announced that he was seeking the Fine Gael nomination for next month's Dublin South by-election than the former RTE economics editor was engulfed in controversy.

Every word he had uttered on radio and TV for the past 17 years was seemingly subjected to the deepest scrutiny. There were dark mutterings from Fianna Fail sources that George had somehow been "pursuing an agenda".

The fact that George was merely objectively reporting what was blindingly obvious to everyone, that the Government had made a complete bags of running the economy, was conveniently ignored.

That many of my media colleagues chose to play along with this line was regrettable. For as many years as I care to remember, columnists such as myself have been bemoaning the apparent inability of our main parties to attract high-quality candidates into politics.

Instead Irish politics has relied on a shallow gene pool composed primarily of the descendants of former politicians. Five of the Fianna Fail cabinet ministers in the current Government are either the sons, daughters or grandson of former TDs or senators.

And it's not just Fianna Fail that depends primarily on nepotism. The leader of the opposition, Enda Kenny, is the son of a former TD, while deputy Fine Gael leader Richard Bruton is the brother of former Taoiseach John Bruton. Talk about keeping it in the family!

Given this cosy political cartel, it would have been reasonable to assume that George's decision to forsake journalism for politics would have been widely greeted by the media.

Here, at last, was someone who had proven himself in another field who was prepared to pack it all in and enter politics. With the Irish economy going through its worst crisis since at least the 1930s, surely public debate would benefit from having someone of George's proven forensic skills taking the Government to task?

Not a bit of it. Instead many of my colleagues have allowed themselves to be side-tracked by such essentially irrelevant issues as when George should or should not have told his bosses at RTE that he had made the decision to enter politics.

Get real. Once George had made his decision to enter politics, there was no going back. He was entitled to the time and space in which to make this decision for himself.

Once he had made up his mind he had a duty to inform his bosses as soon as possible. Which is what he did. That's all his bosses at RTE were entitled to. No more, no less.

Now that George has made his decision, will other high-quality candidates follow his example? I desperately hope so. This country urgently needs an infusion of fresh talent into its moribund political system.

It is only by replacing the current cast of tired, old stagers with a fresh troupe who have proved themselves outside the incestuous confines of Leinster House that we can begin to claw our way back out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves.

- Dan White