More flummery from Brian Cowen today, when he made noises about the public sector having to cut pay. Is anybody keeping count of how many times he has said this? It must be running into the hundreds.
If the phrase 'playing for time' is in the thesaurus, there must be a picture of Cowen underneath it. Just how chronic does the financial situation have to become before this man will take action? God knows the path to recovery has been so well flagged over the past year any schoolchild could recite it, chapter and verse. We all know it is a fundamental reversal of any State's economic organisation to have the wealth-producing sector subordinate to the public sector in earning power. Yet this has been the guiding policy of every Irish Government for the past 30 years.
Now that Colm McCarthy has once again stated the obvious: that this nation is "bust", surely even the public sector unions can see the sense in reducing our massive borrowing requirement by lowering the enormous cost of the public payroll and the most generous social welfare rates in the Western world. Although I'm not holding my breath.
The pernicious populism that characterises politics in this country, and that is seen in the profoundly undemocratic social partnership process (to which Cowen is wedded), has led us to this crisis, but worse, it prevents us finding our way out of it. So long as the Irish establishment holds to the idea that permanent civil servants with secure jobs and pensions are to be favoured at the expense of workers and entrepreneurs in the private sector, who live with risk every day of their lives, then this country will have to remain dependent on the European Central Bank or some other external paymaster. The public sector has many virtues, bringing home the bacon for Ireland is not one of them. Wake up Cowen, before it's too late.
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