Time for Government to pay for their election vote-buying
That’s all well and good when you’re dealing with a child under 10, but it’s hardly the behaviour you’d expect from an adult, not least a Government Minister.
But looking at the departmental expenditure for the first half of this year, you can only draw the conclusion that Ministers did indeed spend profligately and to hell with the consequences.
Accusations of vote-buying abounded prior to the election. Needless to say they were denied by the Government, with various departments claiming it was natural for spending to be high in the first half of the year.
In the post-election arena and an atmosphere of cutbacks and broken promises, it emerges that perhaps some people were indeed spending beyond their limits.
The Department of Finance’s ‘Economic Review and Outlook’ blew the whistle on the out-of-control public spending up to the end of July: “The year-on-year increase in total net voted spending in the first seven months of this year was 21.9%, compared with a Revised Estimates Volume increase of 14.4% for the year as a whole.”
Across the board, Ministers were front-loading spending into the first half of the year and ignoring the consequences.
The figures used to compile these findings throw up some interesting questions which appear to have only one answer: An election was on the way.
* Why did spending in the now restructured Department of Tourism, Sport and Recreation increase by 65%, when its allocation for the year in total only went up by 17.5%?
* How come the Department of Health spent three-fifths of its budget in just over the first half of the year?
* Why did the Department of Environment spend its entire extra allocation for the year in the opening months?
* What on earth was going on in the Department of Agriculture where spending rose by almost 30% when its overall budget for this year was slashed by 12%?
Now the consequences are kicking in, you’ve got to question the logic of overspending. Either the Ministers concerned appreciated they would have to make cuts in the latter stages of the year or else they were front-loading spending in advance of the election.
Lack of access to the roll-out of departments' spending plans means it is impossible categorically to state that individual departments were pumping their areas with potential votes in mind.
Looking back at last year's budget, any objective analysis was that it was a prime example of clever electioneering with increases in health and education and social welfare benefits rising up to election day. Now the chickens have come home to roost as a projected decline in tax revenue means there is no safety blanket for any minister who thinks his largesse will be covered. Ominously, the Department of Finance warned that belts will have to be tightened for the remainder of the year and every department is expected to fall in line in order to get the figures back on track.
“It has been made clear that Government spending will have to be managed within the approved allocation, and spending plans are being closely monitored to ensure that the target is achieved,” it said.
Following the summer break, the Cabinet will meet for the first time on Thursday. The gloomy economic outlook is bound to dominate the agenda.
In many respects, the summer was the first of a number of seasons of discontent as the government drip-fed the bad news of cuts across a range of departments. Already details of 300 euro million in cuts and charges have been revealed with a further 50 million euro yet to come as some Government departments have yet to announce their plans.
A lot done, more to do, as one might say.
