This Government has a pernicious disease called FiannaProgitis

WHAT kind of madness is this? €100 million a year on spin? €2 million a week?

If it is really true, as one of Sunday's newspapers headlined, that the Government is spending that much money a year on public relations, surely they've lost the run of themselves entirely. I know there was a bit of exaggeration in the story. Some of that money goes into public information and awareness campaigns how to stop smoking, how to use an e-voting machine, that sort of thing. And some of it is used to buy in expertise that doesn't need to be retained on a permanent basis.

But every year the amount of public money spent in this way goes up exponentially. And every year more and more of it is spent on nothing but the manufacture and protection of the public image of the Government and its leading personalities.

That may or may not be defensible. But in a funny way, it pales into insignificance beside the other weekend story that the Government is considering a third terminal at Dublin airport. They have yet to solve the row about the second one, and they know there is no case whatever for a third one in anything like the immediate future. But it is under consideration, and if it is decided the money will be committed.

Do we need a third terminal? No. Is there an economic or commercial case? No. Will it make money, even to the point of breaking even? No. Then why is it being considered? To save face in the ongoing row between FF and the PDs over how the second terminal should be built and operated.

I've written here before about the fact that this is the daftest political row since two Central American countries (according to Google it was El Salvador and Honduras) had a six-day war over a football match. Discussing the privatisation of a second terminal, however, sounds almost sane and rational alongside the lunacy of committing ourselves to a third terminal just to save face.

I know that there are some forms of psychological therapy that recognise the inner conflicts we all have and set out to try to reconcile them to each other. Each of us can be a bit of a coward and a bit of a bully, a bit of a miser and a bit of a spendthrift, a bit of a Jekyll and a bit of a Hyde. But if ever there was a case for suitable treatment in this area, it is surely our present Government. Over the years they have been in office, we have had example after example of sheer wanton fecklessness when it comes to the management of public money. Some of those examples, like Punchestown and e-voting, have almost become terms of generic political abuse. And I could give you dozens.

But that gay abandon when it comes to throwing other people's money around like snuff at a wake exists side by side with a sense of meanness, a misery of spirit and imagination, that is sometimes breathtaking.

I don't know if there is a proper psychological term to cover this condition, where the spendthrift and the miser exist side-by-side in the same person. If there isn't, can I suggest a new term FiannaProgitis. It could go into the medical literature. The two news stories above are a good illustration of the spendthrift side of FiannaProgitis. If you wanted to see the other side, the miserly side, you would have had to follow the slow and painful progress of the Disability Bill through its committee stage in the Dáil.

The committee stage, or the third stage, of any bill is the moment when flesh is put on the bones. At the second stage ministers make speeches about the principles of a bill and they always, but always, talk about how they look forward to working with the Opposition to make the bill better when it reaches committee. At committee stage the opposition puts that offer to the test by tabling amendments.

And in this case Kathleen Lynch of Labour and David Stanton of Fine Gael did just that. For several long days Kathleen asked searching questions about what the bill would really do, and David and Kathleen tabled amendment after amendment to try to improve it.

In the overall, they were trying to make the bill live up to what the Government had promised in the programme for government, a bill that would "include provisions for rights of assessment, appeals, provision and enforcement".

AS THE committee stage wound wearily on, with the minister in charge, Frank Fahey, refusing every significant amendment, with civil servants constantly whispering in his ear, a few things became clear about the Government's intentions.

Will there be an unequivocal right to an assessment in the bill? No, there won't.

If a person with a disability does get an assessment, and the assessment says they must have certain services for a decent quality of life (speech therapy, say, or physical aids), will they be available? No, they won't.

If services are refused, will there be a right of appeal? No, there won't.

(Appeals will only be allowed, essentially, about the process, and not the content, of assessments and service statements.) If services are considered essential by an assessment, and refused, will there be a right of enforcement? Not under any circumstances.

Will the money for disability services be ring-fenced, as was also promised when the bill was published? Never.

In other words, the bill will contain not one single element of what was promised in the programme for government. Not one. Instead it will be a bureaucratic mish-mash of liaison officers, complaints officers, appeals officers, enquiry officers, all constrained by law to say 'no' to everything they are asked for. Not one extra speech therapist, care worker, teacher, nurse, social worker or psychologist will be created by this bill. Just bureaucrats.

Why is this? The answer is to be found in Mr Fahey's assertion that we simply cannot afford what he calls "justiciable rights", in other words enforceable rights, rights that really mean what they say. He says that the legislation will be unique in the world. It certainly will.

Government minister after minister will be still calling it "rights-based legislation" in five years' time the only rights-based legislation in the world without a single right in it from start to finish.

Of course, what they're afraid of is opening the floodgates. This Government, willing to throw money at airport terminals, equine centres, e-voting machines, PR consultants, national sports campuses and wildly over-budget road projects, is unwilling to end the marginalisation of people who cannot exercise their citizenship without some of the barriers in their way being removed.

This Government, willing to give tax breaks for private health clinics, capital projects of all kinds, student housing, car parks, all to ensure that people with enormous disposable income can keep their tax liabilities to a minimum, is unwilling to make the long-term committed investment that will end poverty and isolation among a section of the community that only wants equality. It's more than a contradiction. FiannaProgitis is a pernicious disease.