No wonder our offside promises on Euro 2008 fell on deaf ears

THE Football Association of Ireland and their Scottish counterparts have been commending themselves on their unsuccessful bid for the European Championships in 2008.

They put up a great fight and only just lost out. Well, actually they were not even in the top four, and only the most optimistic would ever have thought they would be when they did not have even one suitable stadium in this country.

Of course, the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern supported the bid and promised that his government would ensure that a suitable stadium would be ready. Did the continentals not believe his promise? Would anyone in Ireland have believed him, or any other member of his government, after what happened during the last general election campaign? The Taoiseach or his government were not credible and the people that they were trying to convince were not gullible, with the result that the joint bid by Scotland and Ireland never really had a chance.

Much is being made of Fianna Fáil deception in the last general election campaign, as if the promises made the difference in the eventual outcome. But if the promises were that important, Fine Gael and Labour would have won the election, because they made much bigger promises. The opposition are now in the position that few believed their promises in the first place and nobody is looking to them to uphold those promises now.

Fianna Fáil not only made lavish promises, but also gave a solemn assurance in writing that no spending cuts were being planned secretly or otherwise, even though secret instructions had already been issued to the departments to cut their budgets. People have been sceptical of the auction politics ever since 1977 when Fianna Fáil put the country on the road to economic ruin with their lavish election promises.

Jack Lynch ended up that year with the largest majority since independence. Yet even on election night one could sense his uneasiness as he admitted that he would have preferred a smaller majority.

Within a couple of years his instinctive uneasiness was justified.

Fianna Fáil got its lowest first preference count ever in the 1979 European elections, and before the end of the year moves were already afoot to oust Lynch as Taoiseach. Among those itching for a change then were a couple of first-time deputies Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevy.

Although Ahern has undoubtedly been trying to imitate Lynch, he has never been as popular as him and should remember what ultimately happened to him. Honest Jack was no slouch when it to came tricky budgets. As Minister for Finance in 1965, he and his Department got the figures wrong. He had announced projects totalling some £103.75m, but the Finance people did not add the figures up correctly. Their total only came to £95.5m, with the result that the total authorised in the Finance Act was 8.6% short.

When the discrepancy became apparent, the Taoiseach Seán Lemass admitted the mistake, and Lynch announced that the expenditure would be cut back to the authorised £95.5m. That was a unique budget cut.

With the money running out, Lynch introduced his next budget in March 1966, little over 10 months later.

It was a piece of particularly fancy footwork. He claimed that the early budget was necessary, because of the forthcoming celebrations commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rebellion. In reality there was plenty of time for the budget after the celebrations, but there was a Presidential election in June. Fianna Fáil was running Eamon de Valera, who was already in his mid-eighties. Thus the budget that Lynch introduced in March 1966 was an election budget.

After de Valera was re-elected, Lynch brought in some harsh changes in the form of a mini-budget.

For the historical standpoint, however, the 1972 budget introduced while Lynch was Taoiseach attracted more attention, because it was the first budget with a planned deficit. Moreover, it has been blamed for spawning a degree of financial indiscipline. "The 1972 Budget can stand as a symbol of that breakdown in national discipline," according to Professor Joe Lee.

T.K. Whitaker, the Governor of the Central Bank, advised strongly against that budget. He sensed "that the fruits of 15 years labour were beginning to be frittered away by people who lacked the character and the intelligence to build on the foundations he had been instrumental in laying," in the opinion of Professor Lee. We know now that the irresponsibility we witnessed in the 1970s had disastrous economic consequences from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, when the cream of a generation were forced to emigrate in search of a living.

Ahern and McCreevy were deeply involved in the Fianna Fáil infighting during those traumatic years. Now they are trying to cut back on spending, but the politicians are not giving proper example themselves.

Closing hospitals in comparatively remote areas may not be as politically hazardous as closing them in parts of a big city, but it is much more dangerous in medical terms. In a big city there is always another hospital within a few miles, but in Monaghan the Livingston baby died this week shortly after being delivered in an ambulance, because the maternity unit in Monaghan hospital has been closed as part of the health cutbacks.

What is absolutely mind-blowing about this story is that a woman in that condition was moved to another hospital without even a nurse in the ambulance. Born three months premature, the baby probably had very little chance, but in the prevailing circumstances she had absolutely no chance. That is an indictment of our politicians who seem more concerned with preserving their own perks than with serving the people they are supposedly representing.

Within the last week we had the controversy over the health card being held by Martin Ferris, the Sinn Féin deputy from Kerry North. Some Southern Health Board official saw nothing wrong with Martin Ferris using his medical card to get free treatment, even though he is earning over 70,000 a year. He has been justifiably roasted over the issue, but this kind of thing is really endemic among the broad spectrum of our politicians, who have been blatantly fiddling their expenses for years.

Many deputies take what amounts to subsidised transportation to Dublin on a train, but they collect mileage expenses as if they drove their own cars. If anyone did that in a private business firm they could be fired for fraud.

Most people have to pay their own travel expenses going to and from work, and they cannot even claim those expenses for tax purposes, while the politicians pay themselves handsome travel expenses that bear little relationship to their actual travel costs.