Cutbacks revelation unveils cheap and nasty Government

SO now we know. The Public Expenditure Division (PED) makes the decisions and the Government implements them in stealth.

For reasons I'll explain in a minute, that's all the commentary you need about how bad a Government this is.

Every time the outgoing Government was accused of arranging secret cuts, the howls of indignation from Ministers had to be heard to be believed. Finance, Health, Justice all the incumbents at one time or another denied anything was being contemplated. But not only were the cuts taking place in secret, they were taking place as a result of conscious Government decisions. The Cabinet met twice to agree, as a matter of policy, that election promises would be paid for by cutbacks.

It is, of course, entirely arguable that a policy of that kind represents nothing more than prudence. Governments rearrange finances all the time, shifting money from one worthy purpose to another, rearranging the priorities to match the needs of the day. Government, after all, is the art of the possible, and Cabinet Ministers, with the best will in the world, find themselves forever weighing up options to protect and further the common good.

These decisions, however, had nothing to do with the common good. They were about marginal seats. You can be absolutely sure every penny raised through the process of "here a little cut, there a little cut" was directed to some school, hospital or health clinic in respect of which some candidate or other was screaming blue murder. Cuts in one area, and extra money in another, when it is about nothing more than electoral advantage, can never be justified on the basis of the common good.

And when it is done in secret, and accompanied by pious denials, it is cheap and nasty. As we have been saying since the election, this Government is being found out. They knew when they were making their promises that even the littlest ones couldn't be afforded. The campaign they put together, knowing every shilling of spending was going to have to be found out of cuts in other areas, was every bit as cynical as, say, the campaign that won them a 20-seat majority in 1977. And that campaign began the process of erosion of respect for politics that has held sway ever since.

There's another, deeper issue at stake here. Those cuts were made, and made in secret, because of two issues that lie at the heart of the philosophy of both the last Government and the present one.

The first is they profoundly distrust public spending in all its forms. They have reduced spending on services ranging from good and desirable to essential, so that as a proportion of our national wealth we spend less on such services than we ever did in the past less than almost anywhere else in Europe. But Ministers routinely, with the help of a range of media commentators, describe their spending as being "out of control".

They are ashamed of any increase in spending, no matter how desirable it might be, because they have managed to imbibe the philosophy of Thatcher long after it has been discredited in most other parts of the world.

Secondly, as I said at the start, this Government allows all issues relating to the management of the economy to be left to civil servants. The legend of McCreevy as an independent thinker and a maverick is little more than a myth.

The hyped story this past weekend that he is resisting the appointment of an economic adviser has almost certainly come from within his own Department, and will no doubt be greeted with delight by his senior civil servants, who have been moulding him for five years now.

The Government decisions you can read about in Carl O'Brien's story today were not written by the Government, nor by Charlie McCreevy. They were written by the Public Expenditure Division (PED) of the Department of Finance. Even in the run-up to the election, it is clear that division was really calling the shots.

The PED is a fine body of people. These people are paid to say no. They aren't paid to care about the poor or the sick any caring they do is in their spare time. Neither are they paid to show any sort of imagination or vision. Their job, quite simply, is to keep expenditure down.

Governments worth their salt listen to the PED. Then, often, they overrule them, by applying vision or compassion. Poor Governments let the PED make the decisions, simply follow their instructions all the time. Bad Governments let the PED make the decisions and then hide them from the public.

The fact we now know this Government and its predecessor were implementing PED decisions in stealth tells us all we really need to know about how bad it is.