Taoiseach, don’t just change the faces — change the portfolios

Dear Taoiseach, it’s me again. Despite all my helpful suggestions a week or two ago about the reshuffle, I’m reading in the media that your plans are very minimalist.

I presume this is all based on gossip, and that you haven't been planting the stories yourself.

Certainly, the political correspondents are now so convinced that it is only going to be three people down and three up that if you go any further some of them are going to have coronaries.

Incidentally, if the rumours about who's down and who's up are true, at least you've followed my advice about Michael Smith.

You had to stand up to him when he gave all that cheek. But I'm terrified, reading all the papers, that you've also decided to follow my advice about Mary Harney. I know I said she would do terrible damage in transport, but now I read that she wants health instead.

Oh, my God, have you lost your reason! The woman doesn't believe in a public health service. It's about as mad a proposition as putting a man who believes that inequality is good for you in charge of the equality portfolio.

And then I gather that the way you're going to make the reshuffle look exciting is by moving people around all over the place. But isn't that like a team manager who, when faced with a few bad results, decides to keep his existing team but order them all to experiment with new positions?

The Government has been effectively paralysed, as has the civil service, for months now because of the internal speculation about change.

It is going to make a bad situation worse if almost the entire cabinet has to read themselves into new portfolios, just for cosmetic reasons. Surely, if you are going to change the team's results, you are going to have to take a few risks and find some new players.

And when you do, isn't it time you gave them something relevant to do focusing on real problems with the possibility of real solutions, forcing them to be really accountable for the issues that affect people on a day-to-day basis.

In other words, since you're going to reshuffle, why not take the opportunity to create some portfolios that matter. That would create a genuine buzz, a real air of excitement that, at last, the Government was getting to grips with some real stuff. It might require combining a few of the existing portfolios, since you're limited to a total of 15, but that's been done before, and it has worked well.

Let me give you a few examples of what I mean, a few ideas (ah no, don't mention it, Taoiseach, sure we in the Irish Examiner aim to please) about how you could produce a cabinet that would really look the business. Forget the faces for a minute, just think about some new jobs. This might sound odd at first, but if there's one area that is crying out for a high level of accountability, it is Dublin. Yes, our capital city, the most exciting and frustrating city in the world. Would you ever tell me, who is responsible for Dublin. We have good councillors now (not like the old days), hard-working, committed, well led, but powerless. We have people who take decisions, and they're faceless.

We have demarcation lines between city and county, and indeed overlapping into other counties, that are making the city less workable by the day. Housing, traffic, shopping, parking, amenities, public spaces, potholes, playgrounds, crime, drugs, anti-social behaviour, policing the list of things that need to be brought together is endless. It's a list of things that will never be done right until we all know who is responsible.

So why not a Minister for Dublin, who would be tasked with putting a plan together for the city and its environs, who would develop a vision of the capital over the next quarter of a century, and who would have the authority to build a consensus around that vision? And there's another huge area that needs priority it isn't getting right now so why not a Minister for Technology?

It's the future, as you know, and we're lagging way behind. We're putting money into research in some areas, but we've made a complete hames of the introduction of broadband we can't guarantee every business in Ireland that they will have what they need, never mind every home. We're a million miles away from being able to say that every 16-year-old in Ireland will be computer literate, even though computer literacy is the key to all the new jobs of the future.

And you can still count on the fingers of one hand the number of senior executives throughout the country who can boot up a computer, never mind do their business that way.

And we could revolutionise the delivery of public services, making them more accessible and cheaper, if we could persuade both service providers and users to move to the information age. Smart cards, cashless transactions, everyone carrying their record of entitlements in their wallets the only thing stopping us is the lack of political drive.

It's an area that we really need to take by the scruff of the neck. So why not take the relevant bits from education and science, enterprise and employment, and the Information Commission in your own department (to name just a few), and combine them into a powerful, cabinet-level ministry with the clout to move us into the future.

Then, if you'll forgive me riding a personal hobby-horse, why not a cabinet-level Minister for Disability. You've published the legislation, and you know as well as I do (despite the hype), it's not rights-based at all, but entirely dependent on the resources you put in and how they are managed. You know, if you combine all forms of disability there are perhaps 250,000 people with a disability in Ireland. I've heard it said again and again during the week that we spend €2.5 billion on disability services.

If that figure is true (and sorry, Taoiseach, but I don't believe it), we are spending €100,000 per annum on every person with a disability in Ireland. So how come the level of poverty is so high, and the waiting lists so long? Some management problem there, surely.

And you've also published draft sectoral plans for disability in fact what you yourself describe as a five-year strategy. Although the Disability Bill is lamentably weak and cowardly, the overall strategy might just work but only if it's driven, really driven, by someone who is experienced, able, and willing to be accountable. (Although I said we shouldn't think of names just now, it seems to me that Noel Dempsey might just be the man). Give him the job and the cabinet rank, Taoiseach, and maybe we'll begin to believe you really are serious about disability, and that it's not just crocodile tears.

Of course, you may decide all this needs too much imagination. Well, if we don't see a big dose of imagination tomorrow, don't say I didn't warn you!