We’re being led by people who think they know their onions

We’ve had two examples this week and they illustrate the point beautifully.

In one case, competition is being used as a witchdoctor's mantra to hide the real agenda of privatisation. In the other, it's an excuse for doing nothing. Quackery, apparently, is still very attractive.

Now, don't get me wrong. Competition is a good thing and monopolies, generally speaking, aren't. But unfettered competition in the world we live in can have many unintended (or unthought- about) consequences, simply because it has become a witchdoctor's mantra. My dictionary defines competition as "to strive for superiority". That can only mean that competition produces winners and losers. In the economic sense, some win by providing better goods and services, some by providing cheaper goods and services. Businesses adapt to competition by improving their skills, in some cases, or by reducing their cost base in others. Competition, in that sense, has kept some Irish firms at the top of the marketplace but it has also been responsible for many of the job losses we have seen in recent times.

There are some things competition cannot do. It cannot produce a civilised society. It cannot guarantee fundamental rights. It cannot, often, meet the strategic needs of a nation. For example, Ireland could not survive in the modern world without an absolutely guaranteed electricity supply of the highest standard. Those who want to foster 'competition' in the electricity market have to prove that guarantee will remain.

It is already clear that since 'competition' was foisted on the telecommunications market, Ireland has slipped down every league table that measures standards in this area. How long has it been since you heard Government ministers proclaiming the goal of turning Ireland into a hub of electronic commerce? In the part of Dublin where I live, the phone line has to dry out after a shower of rain before I can get reasonable access to my internet connection. And yet Dublin is a city that receives its television reception through cable to a greater extent than most other European cities. The extent of cabling ought to have meant that every household in Dublin had access to cheap broadband and much cheaper (if not free) telephony years ago. The strategic and tactical errors made in the last six years that have turned us into a second-rate country where telecommunications are concerned ought to be the subject of a tribunal.

The other thing competition can't do is guarantee standards. Look at our taxi industry. Utterly deregulated, bursting with competitive elements.

Without wishing to denigrate individual taxi drivers (many of whom I know from conversation agree with me), we now have thousands of extra taxis. But they are often dirty, frequently unsafe, many overcharge as often as they can get away with it and you still queue all the time. As a monument to competition, it's a disgrace.

BUT never mind all that such talk threatens the power of the witchdoctors. And the witchdoctors are busy. Now, it seems, our three main airports are to be forced to 'compete' with one another. With the stroke of a pen and without offering as much as a line of justification, the

Government has decided to break up Aer Rianta and establish three publicly-owned companies, each striving for superiority with the other.

Why? In whose interests? Where will the markets come from? How will the interests of the catchment areas that depend on these airports be served? Cork airport is going to strive for superiority against Dublin? Or Shannon? On what basis? How can the smaller airports win out? And what happens to them if they don't? Here's one scenario and don't tell me they haven't been thinking about this in Seamus Brennan's office: Dublin airport (already as hostile an environment to the fare-paying public as Heathrow is and that's saying something) will be expanded as the only transatlantic airport we have, but anyone wanting to fly to Europe will have to go first to a real hub like Manchester or Zurich.

Cork will become the chattel of a certain "here's a cheap ticket, now shag off" airline operator, who will force prices down and down to the point where he might as well be given the airport lock stock and barrel. People choosing to fly on his cheap tickets to any part of the southern half of Ireland will discover on landing that they are still 100 miles from their destinations, but that's their tough luck. Shannon will become a sort of cargo hub. Because of its relative isolation, it will be said that it can handle the sort of noisy aircraft that are no longer welcome over most of the European capitals. It will also become a centre for military aircraft training.

They'll all survive, no doubt, in a certain fashion. They will almost certainly be privatised and run for profit. Airports need profits for investment, of course, but any idea that these airports will play any sort of central role in regional or tourism development in the future might as well be forgotten now. In the struggle for survival, the bigger picture will cease to be of relevance.

And the other clarion call for competition we've heard this past week or so comes from our Tánaiste, who moans aloud that if we were all only more vigilant consumers, we would make retail competition work for us and solve one of her problems by keeping inflation down. This from a minister who has spent six years promising to get insurance costs down through competition, while all the time people are being driven out of work by rapidly rising insurance costs. This from a minister who can't sort out the cartels that exist in a dozen key industries and professions. This from a minister who runs a Competition Authority that specialises in giving lectures and has yet to produce any real competition to the benefit of consumers anywhere.

You know the irony of all this? Since this Government came into office, 'competition' has been the quack phrase they have relied on more than almost any other. And yet the phenomenon that has developed under their regime is the one now commonly known as 'rip-off Ireland'. Think about that for a second and then tell me where you'd like to put the peeled onion.