Charlie’s culchies hit the road but PDs don’t like to share their wagon

WAS it a Budget that Charlie McCreevy produced on Wednesday?

Or was it a blueprint to solve Dublin's traffic problems? I'm still trying to figure it out.

The announcement by the Finance Minister that he intends to plant 10,300 civil servants around the country sounds like an extension of Operation Freeflow, that yearly scheme to ease the traffic in the capital.

Ridding the city of 10,300 people and their cars will certainly help the traffic flow there and conveniently help to sweeten voters in the designated towns before next year's local and European elections.

Eight Government departments and the Office of Public Works will move to regional centres, 53 of them in 25 counties. Unlike previous programmes, ministers and senior management in eight departments will also be decentralised.

It's a coincidence, obviously, that three of the departments and the OPW will be transferred to the constituencies of three ministers.

Mr McCreevy wants the volunteer culchies-to-be in situ by the end of 2006.

He said it had taken four years to the day to complete the plan and it would "prove all the cynics wrong". We'll have to wait and see.

At the moment the Finance Minister claims that the 20 million set aside to begin the task was enough, because it would be largely self-financing.

However, he also said that additional capital funds would be provided as the plan was rolled out.

You can write it down that additional funds will be needed because there's no way 10,300 highly paid civil servants are going to oblige Charlie McCreevy free gratis.

In the meantime he has taken the obligatory step when Plan A is being set up he has appointed a committee.

The decentralisation implementation committee to oversee the process will be chaired by industrial relations expert Phil Flynn, but Mr McCreevy also said each minister would be under pressure to deliver on the plan.

No doubt they will come up with a Plan B, which will definitely include extra funding. Possibly, planting an extra 62,000 people into the highest tax bracket will help the move. Certainly, if he had decided to bring his wealthy friends in the bloodstock industry into the tax net, instead of targeting the usual sitting ducks, but Charlie McCreevy looks after his favourite sport.

The morality of our Budget is of a dubious quality, as we discovered about the minority party in Government during the week.

The high ground occupied by the Progressive Democrats isn't so much moral as exclusive. The party to which our Tánaiste, or deputy prime minister, and our Minister for Justice belong is a narrow-minded, prejudiced organisation and they've got a constitution to prove it.

When they were founded in 1985, the PDs declared themselves to be a 'liberal' party, but their sense of liberalism was a little twisted. Whereas in next year's local elections they would quite happily take the votes of the immigrants who will be entitled to vote, they won't take them into the party. You won't find anybody with a Nigerian name on their list of members.

Under the constitution of the perversely named Progressive Democrats, non-EU people need not apply for membership. The party is very picky about whom they associate with politically, although being in coalition with Fianna Fáil would seem to belie that.

There are more than 100,000 resident immigrants, including asylum seekers and refugees, who are entitled to vote in the local elections.

We have all heard the luminaries from the PDs declare their concern for the rights of those people who arrive on our shores looking for shelter and a bit of comfort in their flight from repressive regimes. Little did they realise that the minority Government party here has its own little repressive regime.

In fact, since the day they were founded, the PDs have reserved the honour of joining them on the high moral ground to EU citizens only and, amazingly, it was only this week that this charade was uncovered.

It's rather ironic that the president of the party, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell, and the party leader, Tánaiste Mary Harney, between them are responsible for the Government's immigration policy.

Rather strange, isn't it, that they allow them into the country, but not into their party? This selective policy was revealed by a report called Positive Politics, commissioned by the Africa Solidarity Centre (ASC). It was based on responses to questionnaires sent to all political parties on the inclusion of immigrants in politics. It emerged that the PDs are the only single party to have this objectionable exclusivity clause in their constitution.

THE National Consultative Committee on Racism, which is the Government's watchdog on racism, quite rightly accused the PDs of hypocrisy which is what it is.

"It is inconsistent at the very least with democratic policy in Ireland. We would see this as quite problematic," said a spokesperson. They weren't the only ones to condemn this blatant example of discrimination a whole raft of concerned organisations criticised the hypocrisy.

Now, having been uncovered for the hypocrites they are, the Minister for Justice announced a move to change the rule banning non-EU citizens from membership.

He said that no membership application from a non-EU citizen resident here had ever been refused.

What, exactly, does Mr McDowell mean by that, because it's certainly ambiguous. Does it mean that there are non-EU citizens resident here who are members of the PDs? Or does it mean that no non-EU citizens ever applied for membership?

He went on to say that their rules committee was engaged in rewriting their constitution and their national executive was proposing to broaden membership and revoke this rule.

"We very much welcome the fact Ireland has evolved into a multicultural society over the past decade and we have a duty to listen and pay attention to every diverse voice. In my view, this rule is an anomaly and has no place in our party constitution," he said in his usual humble, magnanimous way.

I presume it will not be too long, so, before we see a black PD deputy in the Dáil.

Not that the other political parties fared too well either. The ASC report found none of them had implemented any measures actively to entice non-nationals into politics. Amnesty International said it was clear that political parties had no understanding of the challenge posed by the growth of racism.

"They will all react with outrage to the suggestion that they may be guilty of propagating institutional racism in their operations, yet across the board they have no policies or practices planned or in place to encourage members of ethnic minorities to become members or candidates for their parties," said Jim Loughram, their development officer.

That's Ireland, Jim.