In one of the most brilliant deconstructions of British newspaper readerships ever broadcast, Jim Hacker, the woebegone Cabinet member in Yes Minister, pronounced that readers of the Daily Mirror liked to think they ran the country, Guardian readers thought they ought to be running the country, Daily Telegraph readers thought another country was running the country and London Times readers actually were running the country.
“What about the people who read The Sun?” wondered his chief civil servant, Sir Humphrey.
“Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big t**s,” replied principal private minister, Bernard Woolley.
Running a country is as sexy as a spreadsheet, and that is how the upper echelon of the Civil Service, otherwise known as the permanent Government, like to keep it. Unlike Oscar Wilde, they subscribe to the maxim that there is absolutely nothing worse than being talked about. It chimes with the assumption that, if nobody is talking about something, there is no problem.
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The Taoiseach relied on this same logic when he was asked if the Government intended any censure of Robert Watt after the Department of Health’s secretary general rejected findings in the independent report on his abortive proposal to fund a public health professorship at Trinity College for Tony Holohan, the former chief medical officer. Had it gone ahead, it would have cost up to €20 million, with the tab to be picked up by another class of people known as the PPS – the public, poor suckers.
Following Watt’s high-handed encounter with the Oireachtas finance committee last week, Leo Varadkar claimed the public had no interest in the affair. “When I talk to people and I talk to voters, when I talk to my constituents, they’re not talking about this issue,” said the Taoiseach. “They’re talking about jobs and job security, they’re talking about traffic, they’re talking about housing, they’re talking about healthcare and how we should invest more in healthcare.”
Perhaps if he had listened to some of the approximately 590,000 people waiting to see a hospital consultant for the first time or those among the record numbers of patients left lying on trolleys last winter or the 579 children waiting for their first mental health appointment – whose numbers have almost doubled in 12 months – he might have heard some thoughts aired about accountability in the Department of Health, which Watt runs. It is moot whether an underinvestment in the €24 billion public health service is the cause of all its problems, or whether at least some of them arise from an inefficient, manager-laden system.
Beside the point
Yet this is beside the point in the context of the Watt saga. What was troubling about the Taoiseach’s response was the insinuation that only matters that exercise voters’ tongues should warrant serious attention. More than 20 years ago, scientists were warning that humankind’s damage to the planet was threatening its very existence, but hardly anyone else was talking about it then, and now the extinction clock may be unstoppable.
Discussing how the country is run may be as dull as ditch water but it is essential. Eamon Ryan, the Green Party leader, has acknowledged as much this week by making the case for an enlarged State administration workforce to cater for the growth in population. Ireland’s public square seldom gets as animated about the tedious nuts-and-bolts stuff of checks and balances as it does by political scandals. A zero missing from a backbencher’s annual declaration of interest attracts several days’ outrage. . Without the safety net of an administrative class answerable to the citizens, everything else hangs on a fragile thread. Leo Varadkar knows this as well as anybody.
As does Micheál Martin, who has defended Watt’s position, despite his own chef de cabinet Deirdre Gillane’s blunt dismissal of Watt’s assertion that she had been briefed about Holohan’s proposed secondment to Trinity College. Under questioning at the finance committee, Watt appeared to accept Gillane’s evidence, albeit grudgingly.
Why, therefore, is the Government circling the wagons around Watt? Because to admit his behaviour has been unacceptable would be tantamount to indicting themselves. For it was they who placed Watt on an untouchable pedestal. In 2020, when he was considering his next career move after 10 years as the top civil servant in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, ministers approved an unprecedented €81,000 pay rise to €297,869 for the next secretary general in the Department of Health. By then, Watt was already in that job in a caretaker capacity. No surprise, then, that his position was made permanent.
No surprise either that his bloated salary caused ructions. Such was the outcry that he announced he would forego the €81,000 until economic conditions improved, failing to mention the economic measures that would dictate the termination of this sacrifice. At a later meeting the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee, he refused to say if he had started receiving his full salary. A statement subsequently issued by his department confirmed that he was in receipt of the full whack.
Watt is self-confident by nature but his self-esteem must have reached stratospheric heights when the Government decided that only a salary bigger than the Taoiseach’s would suffice to keep him in the public service. In a society that equates high earnings with high status, a fat pay cheque is a passport to power.
Before she left the job, Sherry Perreault, a former head of ethics at the Standards in Public Office Commission, urged politicians to legislate for senior civil servants to be included in the obligation to make declarations of their financial interest. Her unsexy advice was ignored. Nobody was talking about it.
With local and European elections due next year, followed by the general election by February 2025, we can expect more playing to the gallery of public opinion by politicians. When they come knocking on your door, maybe you will ask them what exactly they intend to do about the way this country is run.