It was a great day — but we’re still being betrayed by this Government

THE best team at home and abroad. That was the Fianna Fáil slogan in 1989, the last time a European election was combined with an election at home — on that occasion a general election.

The slogan didn't work then. I don't imagine they would want to try it now.

Competence abroad; a shambles at home. Negotiating skill abroad; lies and dishonesty at home. Courtesy abroad; unbridled arrogance at home.

This Government more and more resembles an emperor parading through the streets. All his visitors and guests flatter him about his sparkling raiment, his ermine collar, his fine linen underclothes. Only the people watching the passing parade from the street can see that he is as naked as the day he was born. And it is not a pretty sight.

This week we celebrated a great and moving occasion, the enlargement of the European Union, a day that will deservedly be noted in the future history books. It fell to the Irish presidency to host the occasion, and both the significance of the occasion and the sense of style with which we marked it were impressive. The Taoiseach played his part, and played it well.

But this week too we pass another anniversary, the second anniversary of the day the same Taoiseach promised to eliminate all hospital waiting lists within two years. Guess what? They're afraid to publish the latest, up-to-date figures. Even though they changed the rules a few years ago if you need hospital treatment and you can't afford to pay top dollar, you now have to wait for a consultant's appointment before you get on the waiting list the figures will show another broken promise.

They knew they were going to break that one the day they made it that's how brazen they were in the last election.

And I see according to yesterday's Irish Examiner that "Health Minister Micheál Martin wants €50 million... to kit out and staff vital hospital units and services".

He has advised his Cabinet colleagues in a secret memo that "€400 million worth of newly-built hospital facilities are lying idle because he doesn't have the money to open them up. The funding would enable the opening of hundreds of hospital beds and the hiring of up to 1,500 staff, thereby slashing waiting lists and vastly improving available health services in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and elsewhere".

This is madly urgent. Assuming the newspapers are correct, Mr Martin conveyed this information to the Cabinet in an aide-memoire rather than a memorandum. What's the difference? An aide-memoire can be rushed to Cabinet it doesn't necessarily have to go through the same hoops as a formal memorandum, including inspection by the Department of Finance. Also, an aide-memoire gets discussed in a political session of the Cabinet, often without the prying ears of officials present.

What all that adds up to, of course, is that the proposal to open beds, hire staff, and start (two years later) tackling waiting lists is nothing more than a reaction to what Fianna Fáil canvassers are finding on the doorsteps that the management of the health service is regarded as the biggest single betrayal by this Government.

When the Government comes under fire from the combined opposition this week in the Dáil on the Labour Party motion on hospital waiting lists (a motion put down to mark an anniversary the Government would rather forget), we will all be told that it takes time to make plans, takes time to release resources. The two years, it will be explained, should really start now. What is the expression that springs to mind? Oh yes fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Fionnán Sheahan noted in his piece in the Irish Examiner that the amount the Minister for Health was looking for was the same as the amount spent on the electronic voting system. At a glance, of course, one could be forgiven for thinking that now we are not going to proceed with e-voting, we can spend the money saved on the health service. But alas, it's not money saved. Every penny of that money has been spent, poured down the drain, wasted beyond redemption.

Martin Cullen surely qualifies as a sort of totem pole for the arrogance of this Government (though he has had to battle hard with Michael McDowell for the honour). His condescension and dismissive attitude throughout the entire debate over e-voting was most dramatically exemplified by his spending the money before any sort of consensus, or even public discourse, was achieved.

And the real story has yet to be told.

THE bald summary of conclusions announced by the independent committee (which the Government was forced to establish) hides much deeper doubts and an acute level of anxiety.

The fact that the Government had to indemnify the committee to the tune of 200 million speaks volumes about its relations with the suppliers of the hardware and software, and about that company's obsession with the secrecy of its source code.

That level of secrecy is simply not compatible with the voting system of a democracy like ours, and it never was. And yet since last October the Government and especially Martin Cullen has been waving away all doubts, usually with a couple of personal insults thrown in in the course of anything he had to say.

I don't believe, at this stage, that we will be using this e-voting system in the general election either, whenever it happens. And by the time we do get to use it, the present purchase will be found to be obsolete and out-of-date. Every penny spent on this ministerial folly will be found to have been a total waste.

They poured that money down the drain at precisely the same time as they were forcing through cutbacks in some of the most basic supports offered under the supplementary social welfare system. It is astonishing that the minister in charge of the e-voting debacle can at the same time be so complacent and blasé. If he had any sense of political honour, he would have tendered his resignation after accepting the report of the independent commission.

Political honour and the modern FF party are increasingly mutually exclusive concepts. We are supposed to believe, for example, that they take the Beverly Flynn business seriously. They don't I have yet to hear one member of Fianna Fáil saying publicly that she doesn't deserve to belong to the party of de Valera and Lemass. Her only real crime was to get caught. Had she won in the Supreme Court even if the court had ordered yet another trial of her libel action they would have been crowing about due process and fair play. But she is isolated now only because there is nowhere else to turn. They'll get rid of her because they have to. And if and when she is elected again by the people of Mayo, having successfully sold herself as an innocent victim of another injustice at the hands of the Dublin media, she will be returned to the fold. Because the party of de Valera and Lemass is now the party of Haughey and Burke.