This ‘news’ is cynical spin designed to soften us up for the swindle

DID you ever feel you were being softened up? Politicians are great at it — preparing the ground so you won’t be disappointed, or so that you’ll know who to give the credit to when something happens.

Sometimes they’re subtle about it; sometimes they’re crass and vulgar. Well, taxpayers are being softened up this week and so are people with a disability.

The two examples of softening up I’m talking about are from last Sunday’s newspapers, and both of them are, alas, of the crass and vulgar kind, involving a fairly gross bit of media manipulation. But sure, what else would you expect of this crowd?

Here’s the first example, from last Sunday’s Independent. Labelled an “exclusive”, it’s headed “Harney tells Bertie how PDs will pull out”, and it purports to reveal the PD leader’s tax cut plans.

According to this “exclusive”, our Tánaiste will be proposing “a substantial tax-reduction package of up to €1bn which she wants introduced in the budget on December 1”.

It goes on to say that: “Ms Harney told party colleagues last week that she wants all workers on the minimum wage taken out of the tax net, and average industrial wage earners brought down from the 42% top rate to the standard rate of 20%.

“This tax reduction package will, in effect, put an extra €570 a year into the pockets of thousands of average industrial wage earners, although all taxpayers will benefit to a greater or lesser extent.”

This is news? No it isn’t.

It’s designed to make you believe that the PDs forced an unwilling FF into making tax concessions to lower and middle-income earners.

Why do they need to do that? Because PD policy over the last few years was centred on a demand that the Government reduce tax rates, and especially the top tax rate, which, as you know, favours higher income earners.

Largely as a result, Charlie McCreevy froze the bands and allowances for the last couple of years. And the result was that more and more people on modest incomes found themselves paying the higher rate of tax.

In fact, after the last budget, 52% of the people paying tax in Ireland were paying at the higher rate.

Quite an achievement for a low-tax government!

This central fact has been highlighted again and again during the year, principally by Pat Rabbitte. And, in the recent national negotiations, it became the central demand of the unions that the tax take be distributed more fairly, so that people on low incomes would be paying at the lower standard rate.

The Government, suitably embarrassed that people had seen through their claims of being committed to low tax, agreed that in this year’s budget, their priority would be on taking low-paid people out of the tax net.

Everyone who follows this issue knows this.

They know that the Government will have no choice in the budget but to adjust bands and allowances to enable lower-paid workers to keep more of their hard-earned wages.

The credit for that will properly belong to an astute opposition and a vigilant trade union movement.

But Mary Harney is now using the media to claim that it is her doing. By announcing that she will demand what the Government is already committed to, she is hoping that we will all accept that the PDs have delivered something that only they believe in and only they could deliver.

Opportunistic, isn’t it?

But if that’s opportunistic, consider the cynicism likely to be generated by this headline, the main story in the Sunday Business Post.

“Ahern plans €15 billion for disabled,” it says, over a story that promises that the Government “will unveil its long-awaited Disabilities Bill within the next fortnight, promising a new departure for people with disabilities...”

According to this leading paper: “Government spending on disabilities currently runs at about €2.5 billion a year, excluding social welfare payments.”

It goes on to say that: “Under the new legislation, funding is to be allocated on a multi-annual basis, and will be ring-fenced for disabilities. This means that the legislation will entail concrete spending commitments of up to €15 billion over the next five years.”

Now, I don’t blame newspapers for this kind of thing. They tend to print in good faith the figures that Government ministers give them (and in this case the story liberally quotes Willie O’Dea, the minister-hoping-to-get-into-the-Cabinet-quite-soon).

But €2.5 billion a year, lads? How did ye manage to swallow that?

THE beauty of a figure like that, of course (if it were true) is that it makes the disability movement look very greedy to be asking for more. But €2.5 billion is nearly twice what, for example, CIÉ and Aer Lingus combined earn in a year.

It’s really about four times what the Government actually spends on disability services, excluding social welfare payments (people with permanent disabilities get a means-related allowance, maximum around €135 a week).

On March 23 last, Willie O’Dea’s colleague Tim O’Malley told the Dáil that his department invests €643 million in health-related disability services, of which 388 million was provided for services to persons with intellectual disability and those with autism.

The Government routinely adds all sorts of bits and pieces to this figure, so they can say, as the Taoiseach did in the Dáil on May 12, that they’re spending a billion on disability services.

You’d imagine, wouldn’t you, if they were really spending that sort of money in any sort of systematic way, that there wouldn’t be any waiting lists at all; that parents wouldn’t be forced into legal action to get basic services for their children; that parents wouldn’t be dying without knowing what’s going to happen to their children.

You’d imagine that people with disabilities wouldn’t be experiencing an 80% unemployment rate or the highest incidence of real poverty of any group in Ireland.

The brazenness of feeding out figures like €2.5 billion a year, knowing them to be a gross exaggeration, lies of course in the fact that when the Government does eventually publish its Disability Bill, they’re going to launch a major propaganda campaign claiming that Ireland is now a world leader.

The promise of more money, allied to the claim that we already spend so much, is going to be used to take the steam from disability rights campaigns, and to convince them that they cannot rely on public support.

I’ve already written here that the disability movement would settle for a systematic plan aimed at resolving the real problems that exist, backed up by proper consultation and a solid commitment to progressive realisation of rights over time.

But in the spinning that’s starting already, I smell a pretty cynical attempt to defeat the disability movement by the cheapest kind of public relations stunts.

If the Government wants to prove me wrong, they’ll correct the grossly-exaggerated figures they are putting out and admit that we have an awful long way to go before basic justice is done.

But I’m not holding my breath.