In 2016 the Fine Gael government introduced the concept of a Rent Pressure Zone to stem the growth in rents.
The Opposition had demanded rent freezes and when Fine Gael housing minister Simon Coveney proposed a cap of 4 per cent on annual rent increases, Sinn Féin’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin spotted a problem. A flaw in the legislation meant the 4 per cent rent cap could have been accidentally doubled to 8 per cent for some. Coveney quickly offered an amendment, fixing what was accepted as a drafting error.
Does the mistake around percentages in that instance support the argument of former taoiseach Leo Varadkar last weekend when he said many in Irish politics do not understand numbers or percentages?
In a speech to the Irish Medical Organisation, Varadkar said that generally those who did well in professions such as politics and journalism were good at English but not at maths.
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He recalled, with some relish, trying to explain to an unnamed former Cabinet member “that if house prices fell by 50 per cent and then recovered by 100 per cent, they actually were back to where they were at the start”.
His one-time Government colleague was left with a “blank face and blank stare” and “could not understand this for a second”.
“And then of course percentages, medians and means are not well understood by a lot of people in the media system and the political system, which is a big worry, quite frankly,” said the former Fine Gael leader.
Several TDs from across the political spectrum contacted for a response to Varadkar’s comments did not agree.
“Leo thinks we are all on the top deck of the bus,” said one of his colleagues, referring to the famous Financial Regulator’s advert about financial illiteracy, which featured a man standing up on a bus and sheepishly admitting: “I don’t know what a tracker mortgage is.”
Alan Ahearne, professor of economics at the University of Galway, who has worked as economic adviser to a number of Governments, recalled Varadkar talking about that conversation on house-price increases and decreases. He wondered if that example, which many would find confusing, was a bit of a trick question.
They don’t have to be fantastic at stats or interpreting statistics. At every meeting, civil servants will use charts and spreadsheets. None that I can recall had any difficulty following those
— Prof Alan Ahearne
“I don’t think that politicians are particularly innumerate. Even with my university students, they don’t all take statistics classes. When I teach a big class, and if I do any little bit of maths, some people will get it easily, and some people will get a little bit confused,” said Prof Ahearne.
“So I don’t see why politicians should be any different. Politicians are representatives of the broader population so some of them will grab numerical stuff very easily and some of them won’t – and there will be a big crowd in the middle who will need to think about it for a while. They reflect broader society.”
Ahearne agreed that politicians with responsibility in specialist areas such as finance and public expenditure need to be very comfortable with numbers. He said the likes of former minister for finance Michael McGrath, Minister for Public Expenditure Paschal Donohoe and Sinn Féin’s finance spokesman Pearse Doherty are all very proficient in numbers.
Minister for Finance Jack Chambers, who studied medicine before turning to politics, would have done a “huge chunk of mathematical stuff” during the course of his medical training, said Ahearne.
“He would be used to looking at big charts with 100,000 patients and calculating how many were likely to develop something like diabetes.”
Ahearne said ministers with non-economic portfolios had no difficulty dealing with percentages, forecasts and averages, citing Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue, Coveney and Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys as examples. Generally, he said, expert numeracy would not be essential for a TD.
“They don’t have to be fantastic at stats or interpreting statistics. At every meeting, civil servants will use charts and spreadsheets. None that I can recall had any difficulty following those,” he said.
“Politicians might not have all the nuances but they will know enough to present it and to get the main message out of it.”
Kerry Sinn Féin TD Pa Daly said he did not understand what Varadkar was getting at: “Perhaps he was referring to ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’.”
“There is a responsibility on you to dig deep when studying statistics so you can present them fairly,” said Daly, who is Sinn Féin’s justice spokesman.
Former enterprise minister Richard Bruton saw it a little differently and not so much as an example of innumeracy, but as a slightly lopsided reading of numerical data by politicians.
“There are numerous examples of ‘confirmation bias’ where politicians only see the information they want to see, or that which supports their own opinions,” he said. “Think of the interpretation of polls or descriptions of the state of any service. People judge the 80,000 waiting, not the 1.6 million who have had successful procedures. I am not sure that, as a class, politicians are less numerate.”
Fianna Fáil TD Catherine Ardagh, a solicitor by profession, did not agree with Varadkar.
“I can make my way around Excel spreadsheets, and I would say all my colleagues can do that, can read balance sheets, can do debits and credits,” she said.
“Nowadays most of us can do things that maybe people probably couldn’t do in the past. We’re all very familiar with them nowadays.”
Another of Varadkar’s Fine Gael colleagues, Sligo-Leitrim TD Frank Feighan, said that, like many colleagues, he was not an expert with figures but would be comfortable with them.
Varadkar is entitled to his opinion, he said, but he did not agree that numeracy was a critical skill.
[ Leo Varadkar is right: basic maths should not flummox a minister or any of usOpens in new window ]
“A politician has to be jack of all trades. He has to be an accountant, a consultant, a GP, a counsellor, front of house, back of house,” said Feighan.
“Everyone expects a politician to have some knowledge of everything. Politicians can’t be an expert in every field because if that was the case you would have very few people in politics.”
There was one critical moment when there was a duel in financial know-how during an election campaign that is illustrative of the importance of knowing your numbers. In 2007, Fianna Fáil accused Fine Gael and Labour of a “con-job” with its pre-election spending promises. Brian Cowen, then minister for finance, said both Opposition parties had made pledges worth nearly €2 billion, with only €900 million of spending available.
“It’s not good enough. It’s a pig in a poke and people won’t buy it. They are busting their own framework,” he said.
Fine Gael accused Fianna Fáil of pursuing the “politics of fear”. Fianna Fáil won the argument and the election. Within a year, Fianna Fáil’s own policies had crashed the economy.
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