HEART BEAT:We need to bring some common sense back into our Government, writes MAURICE NELIGAN.
“Through me the way into the suffering city
Through me the way to the eternal pain”
THUS SPOKE our Chief Elf with apologies of course to Dante. In truth there were no apologies, just the promise of pain now and more to come. Just how we happened as a nation to arrive in the nine circles of hell was not made clear. For those geographically minded we appear to be located on circles four and eight, particularly the latter.
There is a certain disconnect here. To hear the Taoiseach and his Ministers talk you could almost assume that they had inherited this catastrophe from some incompetent predecessors and were squaring up to set us all back on the right path.
They were the tough men for the hard road. There was no mention at all as to how we had got ourselves onto such a difficult path. There was no acknowledgement that they themselves had been in power for the past 12 years and had created the conditions for the disastrous property bubble and associated bank malpractices that have blighted not alone our lives but also future generations on this island.
No, public sector workers, you didn’t create the problem. No, private sector workers, taking pay cuts and losing your jobs, you didn’t create it either. But in common with everyone else, you’re going to have to pay for it.
An apology might have helped, or a purpose of firm amendment and a promise not to sin again; remember that from confession? It might have helped also had you come before the Dáil and announced the abolition of state cars other than on official state business.
It might have been prudent also for you to announce a major pay cut for yourself and indeed everyone in the political establishment or do you honestly believe that you’re all worth more than your European counterparts? It might have helped also to end unvouched expenses and multiple pensions.
You didn’t do it; however, you lectured everyone else on living beyond their means and you predicted further fire and brimstone. That indeed may be correct but an aroused angry people are not going to be receptive to such prescriptions from those responsible for our troubles.
Perhaps you could explain to us bemused folk; how it is that full-time paid civil servants are deployed in your constituency offices and those of fellow Ministers, and that furthermore such staffs also deal with constituency matters in Ministerial Dublin offices.
That has nothing to do with the public weal, it is only to try to ensure re-election. Don’t bother telling us all about your constituency work and what you achieve for the good people of Offaly because we might ask what the county councillors are for and ponder the purpose of such over-manning.
This time the “social partners” disappointed you. I was always wary of this principle that allows the Government to negotiate deals with a variety of unelected vested interests; ignoring Dáil Éireann and those lesser folk outside the remit of this privileged circle.
Edward Heath stood tall when he said “we are the trade union for pensioners and children; the trade union for the disabled and the sick; the trade union for the nation as a whole”.
It is almost as if in recent years “social partnership” was akin to appeasement, in which industrial peace was bought at the expense of competitiveness.
We seemed always to be able to afford what was demanded. Nobody said no, we can’t afford that. Our cost base made us and still makes us unattractive for overseas investment. Our infrastructure is, despite the years of plenty, grossly inadequate.
We are talking research and a knowledge-based economy and in this we are doing what of late we have done best, just talking. In many ways this is very simplistic because the cost of living here was disproportionately high compared with our European neighbours. This was especially and ludicrously so in housing.
So everybody demanded high wages just to stand still. It is nonsense and evasion for Ministers to point out that our nurses, teachers, doctors, gardaí, etc are paid more than their European equivalents without considering this basic fact.
Incidentally, those most out of line in this comparison are our politicians, especially at the higher echelons of government. Maybe “social partnership” wasn’t such a great idea after all. Another British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain learned quickly about appeasement; “I believe it is peace for our time. Go home and have a nice quiet sleep.”
He and the people he was addressing woke up soon enough and found themselves fighting for their existence. There stand we now.
I’ve been through this kind of situation before – the 1950s, 1960s and 1980s. They all had bad times. We somehow muddled along in a society characterised by low incomes, high unemployment and significant emigration.
The election of 1977 changed all that and, in my opinion, ushered in our present political climate. That election was bought on a grand scale by the abolition of domestic rates and the reduction of car tax to derisory levels.
We lost probity and abandoned common sense. We know better now, at least I hope we do. We must understand that the wellbeing of political parties is nothing compared to the wellbeing of that entity to which we all belong – the Irish Republic.
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon