New Year's Resolution

And so 2012 is born, and a happy new year to all. But what do we wish for public policy in the next 12 months, and will our hopes be realised?

For a start, it would be a pleasant surprise if the authorities faced up to their responsibilities and took some action to reduce the burden they are placing on the taxpayer. Too many state-sector operatives seem to think that spending cuts only apply to public services and not to themselves. Wrong! An estimated 70% of spending on the health service alone is made-up of salaries and other remuneration. It's probably a similar breakdown of costs in the other public bodies, so let's start with the biggest items on the expenditure list before closing down hospital wards and old-people's homes.

We are also facing into the new era of funding local services through local taxes, such as the household charge and water metering. This sounds fine in theory, if it wasn't obvious that the councils will simply use the money as another way of bolstering their pay and privileges. This is unacceptable.

There is, apparently, an individual called the 'Local Government Auditor' who is supposed to investigate local authority spending for any sign of waste or inappropriate use of public funds. He has been conspicuous by his absence. The simple truth is that there has been zero oversight of public spending in the local authorities, which have acted as a massive slush-fund for favoured cronies and organisations at the expense of the taxpayer. We cannot allow this mafia to get their hands on more of our money, through the new taxes, without verifiable and enforceable safeguards against waste and embezzlement.

Finally, the new government will eventually have to grow a backbone and scrap the Croke Park Agreement. It is simply unaffordable without beggaring every other part of Irish society. Although, who knows, perhaps that's the plan?

Vested Interest?

Comment on the Guardian's website: '[Ireland] needs to exit the euro but, especially for a small population, there is a large public sector that has a vested interest in maintaining high salaries denoted in what is primarily a German currency.'

It's a thought-provoking comment, but is it true? I would say it is, but I don't think that's the end of the story either. Yes, public-sector salaries are way out of line with the private sector average. Yes, the government is in thrall to the public sector unions, as are all the political parties represented in the Dáil, leading to a blanket-ban on parliamentary discussion of public-sector wage rates. But is this such a terrible thing?

Within living memory most of Ireland was an economic basket-case. Not just for short periods, as now, but chronically. Most people just resigned themselves to the intractability of Irish underperformance and emigrated. It was the only logical course of action for those who weren't related to big farmers or who hadn't bagged the magical jobs in the banks or the civil service.

However, in the sixties things started to change. The opening-up to the outside world brought opportunities and some jobs in its wake and this led to a growth in government spending based on these new tax revenues. For the first time, the public sector was more than simple job-security, it was now a source of well-paid employment.

Now, however, things have changed once again. The private sector is now comparable to anywhere in the world in terms of skills and growth-potential. The public sector, however, is still run on the same basis it always was, except it is now vastly inflated in size, with in-built growth drivers for wage inflation and pension entitlements, thanks to decades of populist vote-buying by craven politicians. Therein lies the dilemma. Do we bite the bullet and reduce the public sector to a size and cost commensurate with the much-reduced size of the domestic economy, or do we use the model of public-sector remuneration as the target-aspiration for the rest of the workforce?

What does seem clear in the wake of the global financial crisis and our own "bailout", is that any catching-up by private sector workers with public sector wages, increments, bonuses and pensions will take decades or may never happen. That leads to a problem for governments attempting to balance the books, of course, but it also raises the philosophical question of whether job-security and a guaranteed pension is not a valuable advantage in itself that is simply not available to those outside the government camp? And does that not suggest an appropriate benchmarking with private sector positions would allow for this advantage in terms of reduced monetary advantage vis a vis the private sector? Just a thought.

Richie and I

I was in Dublin last Friday where, among other things, I visited Elvery’s Sports on Stephen’s Green with a friend who needed a Leinster Rugby top. It’s not the sort of place I would be frequenting too often, but it was an eye-opener to see some of the prices they’re still getting away with.

Anyway, I was lurking near the polo-shirts while my friend was trying on the rugby top, when who should bustle in the door but good old Richie Boucher. Yes, THAT Richie Boucher, the current boss of Bank of Ireland and one of the men who “crashed Ireland” leaving us with the bill.

As it happened he seemed to be in search of polo-shirts, so he was on one side of the stand and I was on the other, about an arms-length away from him. We were the only people at that end of the shop, so we would have been free to have a little chat, shake hands, or engage in a Vulcan death grip, but none of those things happened due to my inability to decide what to do. What do you do with one of the bankers who has put thousands on the emigration trail again, ruined businesses, impoverished elderly shareholders, destroyed Ireland’s reputation abroad and bequeathed the taxpayer NAMA and the intervention of the IMF?

Boucher must be well used to these internal debates among the people who obviously notice him on the shopping trail because, after a swift look at the polo-shirts and me, he tore out the door with his little paper gift bag in his hand (didn’t catch the brand name), clearly using the agility of his sporting past as a means of avoiding unpleasant encounters. I, on the other hand, was left telling the twenty-something male shop assistant of his illustrious visitor, receiving in reply a shrug and the telling comment: “Don’t know him.”

And of course that reaction from the sportswear-clad assistant is the reason, in a nutshell, why the likes of Richie Boucher and all the other senior executives in the banks who were supposed to be “cleared-out” but weren’t, have survived. They, and the politicians, rely on the apathy of the people to avoid accountability. There are no sustained demands for justice. There are no public forums where constant pressure can be applied to the body politic for a responsible way of doing business and for “the elite” to answer for their crimes or incompetence. This is why nothing changes except the size of the bill we have to pay to enable fabulously-wealthy insiders like Richie Boucher to do his Christmas shopping without a care in the world, in the streets of the capital of the country he helped to bankrupt. And, as I recall, he didn’t even buy anything. Merry Christmas.

Cameron's Kingdom

British Prime Minister David Cameron is coming in for a lot of criticism for his uncompromising stance during the 'save the euro' summit in Brussels. But is he really so culpable? For instance, if Cameron had gone along with the Franco-German steamroller at the summit, as the Irish leader did, would he be fulfilling the democratic wishes of the British people? Hardly. The last time they were asked a specific question about the EU was in the referendum on whether they should join it, back in the early '70s, and even then it was sold to them as a free-trading common market and nothing more. And does anyone stop to ask whether one of the Allied victors in the struggle for democracy *should* be signing away unilateral decision-making rights to a union that includes countries like Hungary, which is now led by gerrymandering, right-wing reactionaries? Sure, the euro's in trouble, but Britain never wanted it in the first place and warned of its dangers from the start. Are they now to be vilified for not enthusiastically going-along with the latest half-baked plan to save it? Is it not possible that Cameron sees the good ship 'euro' about to sink and doesn't want his leg tied to the anchor chain? I think time will tell if Cameron has made the right choice or not. What is clear is that our own leader is not leading. At least Cameron was brave enough to make a decision instead of meekly going along with the crowd. That's something!

Do It Yourself

It would be pointless to discuss the comments of Minister Pat Rabbitte in respect of the Croke Park Agreement and its possible renegotiation. The fact that a politician of his longevity is only seeing fit to mention it now should speak for itself. However, it does signal the shift in perception that is taking place even in the fossilised minds of the social-partnership elite, and the possibility that some kind of sense will prevail in the direction of public policy, even at this late stage.

The Irish government and its European counterparts have been juggling monetary figures for so long they have become meaningless. The latest summit in Brussels may as well have been discussing monopoly scores for all the difference it made to the underlying chasm of debt that shows no signs of going away. There also seems little doubt that ordinary people are giving up on the politicians, and even the State, for the more certain refuge of their own resources. This is worrying for the generations who have been raised in the embrace of the welfare state and who turn to it as they used to turn to mother. But mother has gone and we're beginning to be resigned to that.

Instead, enterprising and resourceful people are rediscovering the skills of their youth or even of their forebears and growing their own food and fixing their own property. Some of the more adventurous are even planning their own homes without reference to local authorities or banks. These are often built from the natural resources around them - such as straw or clay - and cost a fraction of houses built from the products of big industry and financed by big business. Is this a good thing? You bet!

Return of the Prodigal

There's been a lot of water under the bridge since my last post (I'm afraid Mr. Zuckerberg's Facebook was too captivating), but it would be wrong to neglect a good thing when it's crying out for attention, so here goes!

Are we in the final days of civilisation? To listen to news broadcasts or to read the papers, you'd think so. But it's also important to be aware of the vested interests steering public discussion to their own advantage, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the panic over the "eurozone crisis".

It was only days after the TARP legislation was passed by the US Congress that I heard a commentator remark on how the taxpayer bailout of the banks would inevitably lead to a sovereign debt crisis, yet we still have the likes of Angela Merkel being apparently surprised at peripheral nations finding themselves in debt. Can this be for real? Of course not. The strongest nations on the continent are simply practicing Rahm Emanuel's injunction of "never wasting a good crisis" and exploiting the turmoil on the markets and the weakness of European solidarity to ram through further centralisation of power in Europe. Clever? Yes. Welcome? Hardly.

Elite Are Spared the Axe

People are right to praise Lenihan's Budget as a brave attempt to arrest the freefalling fiscal crisis, but I'm surprised they didn't mention how Lenihan sold the pass on public service pensioners.

There is little point in tackling the structural deficit without including these people, many of whom 'retired' in their 40s or early 50s on incredibly generous pensions, only to start second careers. These are not little old ladies sparing the coal!

The fact that Lenihan has made radical changes to the pension rules for new entrants to the public service is an implied admission that the previous rules were nothing but a sham. If I recall the figures correctly, Ireland is facing a public sector pension bill of some €100 billion by 2030. That is not only unsustainable, it is a scandalous imposition on our future workers, thanks to the uncosted and fraudulent populism of a series of dreadful governments in our recent past. Worse still, is the well-founded impression that public service pensions were spared only because retired ministers and politicians would be caught as well.

Talleyrand could have been referring to the Dail when he said of the Bourbons, "They have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing." What a pity our politicians have once again added their usual dollop of cynicism to a vital measure of national policy.