Former ceann comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl has said the country has “hog-tied ourselves to bureaucracy”, questioning whether the Oireachtas has the “courage and vision” to “throw off the shackles” and confront shortfalls in housing, infrastructure and disability services.
Mr Ó Fearghaíl, who served two terms as speaker of the Dáil and is a backbench Fianna Fáil TD for Kildare South, was responding to a recent essay in The Irish Times by John Collison, tech entrepreneur and co-founder of payments company Stripe.
In a statement to The Irish Times, Mr Ó Fearghaíl said he had raised similar points over the years at meetings of the Fianna Fáil party “but alas, to no avail”.
Mr Ó Fearghail said the country should be grateful to Mr Collison for his “astute and accurate analysis of the stasis which currently affects many of our State’s bodies and agencies”.
READ MORE
In his article, published last Saturday, Mr Collison noted that Ireland was not building infrastructure quickly enough to satisfy various demands. The slow pace in supply of homes and energy systems, in particular, was not keeping pace with population growth.
“Our processes to decide on what gets built and where have broken down.”
While Mr Ó Fearghaíl said he disagreed with aspects of the historical analysis in the essay, he said Mr Collison’s focus on the current situation “cuts to the core of many of our problems”.
“We have hog-tied ourselves with bureaucracy, we have created agencies to accept the blame when things go wrong, and we have created a system of government at both national and local level that is cripplingly risk-averse,” he said.
Amid much favourable political commentary on Mr Collison’s article, Mr Ó Fearghaíl said the real question was “whether there exists the courage and vision at Oireachtas level to throw off the shackles, or whether we can expect those who have helped to bring about the current situation to be the ones to take the daring leap of fate.”
He said his hope was that those privileged to hold elected office would find their voice and “effect the necessary change”, and pointed to the recent successful presidential campaign by Independent Catherine Connolly.
“We can learn from president-elect Catherine Connolly’s campaign. She demonstrated how someone with a vision could inspire people of all ages and backgrounds,” he said. “It’s time for those of us who inhabit the middle ground in Irish politics to formulate and project a vision for the country’s future.”
