McCreevy’s stand on political expediency comes back to haunt him

GENERAL elections seem to be developing into an auction in promises,” Charlie McCreevy complained in the early ’80s. “We are so hell-bent on assuming power that we are prepared to do anything for it.”

He was one of the backbenchers who helped Charles Haughey to become Taoiseach, but he was also one of the first of his supporters to have the guts to criticise him publicly.

“We need a strong Government to take unpopular decisions in the short term and to place the long-term overall good before short-term expediency,” McCreevy declared in an interview on April 27, 1981.

“If political parties continue to disgrace themselves, then democracy itself is at risk.”

That is just as true today as it was 21 years ago. As a country we are again living beyond our means, and the threat to our democracy is even greater, but nowadays McCreevy himself is one of the prime architects of that threat.

As Minister for Finance during this year’s general election campaign he formally assured the leader of the opposition on May 13, 2002 that despite rumours to the contrary, there were “no significant overruns projected and no cutbacks whatsoever are being planned secretly or otherwise”. Yet no sooner was the election over and the Government returned to power than it announced spending cuts of over 300m euro.

Could McCreevy have possibly been deceived when he gave the assurance in May? Unlike all of our governments in the past 30 years, this one was in the happy position of replacing itself. Thus, if McCreevy was deceived, he must have been deceiving himself. If this was the case, then he is clearly out of his depth and should be replaced as Minister for Finance without delay. Of course, it is virtually inconceivable that he was deceived.

In times gone by it might have taken from 30 to 50 years to get at the government papers that would reveal what was actually happening behind the scenes, but Carl O’Brien of the Irish Examiner got access to pertinent documents last week under the Freedom of Information Act.

He found irrefutable evidence that the Department of Finance informed the various other departments on February 26, 2002, that, on foot of a Government decision, they were to cut 13m from their budgets so that the money could be given to the Departments of Justice and Health for announcements to be made during the general election campaign. On April 17 the Department of Finance issued a further notice to the other departments to cut another 19m to fund the expansion of the primary school building programme that was to be announced during the election campaign.

McCreevy knew what was happening, but he shamelessly sought to mislead not just the opposition but also the electorate.

Any minister who would abuse his office by using his position to mislead the Dáil should not be considered fit to hold his office.

Some 32m worth of secret cuts were to facilitate the Fianna Fáil campaign. The party was effectively using the national exchequer for its own political purposes.

If the Government were directors running a business, they would be in serious trouble with the stock exchange. After seeing what happened to Enron and WorldCom, the Irish public should realise the risks of such danger of creative accounting.

Back in March 1966, Minister for Finance Jack Lynch introduced an exceptionally early budget, less than 10 months after the previous one. It was not due until May, but he brought it in, supposedly because of the Golden Jubilee of the Easter Rising in April. In reality, however, the estimates on which the previous budget was based had gone seriously wrong and it might be a bad mistake to wait until May, especially with the Presidential election the following month.

Lynch increased the price of beer, wine, spirits, and tobacco, as well as increasing the income tax rate by 10.5%. Gerard Sweetman, the Fine Gael spokesman on finance, called it “the harshest Budget any Minister for Finance has ever introduced”.

The 1916 commemorations afforded the opportunity to divert public attention, and then as Eamon de Valera’s campaign for re-election seemed to be in trouble, the Government conceded a hefty rise in the price of milk to farmers. After the Long Fellow squeaked back to Áras, a mini budget was introduced. “The people now know what it cost to buy the Presidential election,” Gerard Sweetman remarked.

It may be some time before we find out what it has cost us to put the current Government back. The irony was that it was so unnecessary, with the opposition’s self-destructive leadership problems and public relations stunts such as trying to grab its own notional Celtic Snail by the horns.

Some 6m was allocated to the Department of Tourism for festivals and current events. 1m of that was awarded to just two so-called festivals: one in the current minister’s constituency and the other in his predecessor’s.

John O’Donoghue did not need to spend 486,000 funding a new festival in Killarney to secure his seat. Was it for stunts like this that the various departments were told to cut back on spending? In the last 30 years there have been a whole series of election stunts. In 1973 when the opposition came up with a joint programme promising to abolish VAT on food stuffs, Martin O’Donoghue advocated that Fianna Fáil should respond with a promise to abolish rates on dwelling houses, but George Colley, the Minister for Finance, rejected the idea. Even though the Government had firmly ruled out the abolition of rates, Jack Lynch made a spectacular reversal during the election campaign. He suddenly promised to abolish rates.

The following day the party had an embarrassment of similarly monumental proportions. An election message was published in the Limerick Leader from the Fianna Fáil candidates, Gerry Collins, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, and Michael Noonan.

“Jack Lynch has not tried to ensure re-election by trading on the innocence of some of the people,” they asserted. “He does not dangle rosy promises of No VAT on food, No Rate, etc, to win over the unsuspecting.”

Even members of the cabinet were caught by surprise. The 1977 general election was marred by the infamous Fianna Fáil manifesto, while the 1981 one was blighted by the Government’s “creative accounting” and “funny money”. In 1987 Fianna Fáil lambasted the outgoing Government over health cuts, and then introduced even more savage ones. And worse, it went to the country over the opposition’s insistence on the payment of a mere £400,000 to haemophiliacs infected with HIV due to tainted blood. Since then lawyers have received a multiple of that money in legal fees over the tainted blood.

In 1989 the PDs campaigned to get rid of Charlie Haughey, but then turned around and went into government with him. It was the turn of the Labour Party three years later when it swept to power on the Spring tide. The party had essentially campaigned on the need to banish Fianna Fáil from government, but then turned around and went into government with the same Fianna Fáil. The PDs spent five years railing against Spring and Labour over their actions then, but the PDs have spent the last five years doing the same thing themselves.

Is there no end to the hypocrisy? Charlie McCreevy and his colleagues in the current government didn’t start the deception, but they have brought it to a new low.