Public sector reform - Taoiseach needs to do lots more

EVERY parish in Ireland has single-issue activists trying to get a school extended or a new one built, others trying to establish proper facilities for children with special needs; some determined to provide respite care so the parents and siblings of children with physical or mental disadvantages can try to live like a normal family for a few hours every few weeks; others fighting to keep their accident and emergency facility open; others trying to establish the cancer screening services regarded as everyday-as-aspirins in a properly functioning, European democracy.

In another parish it might be a dialysis unit or transplant services or speech therapy, others might dare to demand drinking water fit for human consumption, others want school bus routes revised, others a post office or Garda station retained.

Good, decent people, your friends and relations, depending on golf classics, card drives or sponsored walks to fund services they believe they need because the State will not or cannot serve their needs.

Each of these campaigns is animated by determination and anger in equal measure. A determination that a loved one or a neighbour’s child will not endure the indignities and disadvantages of being left to languish in the half light of an inadequate health or education system. Determined that the advances in science, medicine and education will afford someone in their orbit an opportunity to achieve a fuller life, the one denied to them by nothing more than a cruel twist of fate.

If these activists are sometimes angry it is only to be expected. Too many families know how deeply the emotional, physical, spiritual or economic consequences of having to provide exceptional care or educational facilities can drain joy from a relationship, the scarce energy from an already-demanding life. They will know how contagious tragic circumstances can be.

That these situations are perpetuated — in our name — by the State through the often-impenetrable quagmire of our public service should make us all angry.

Our story today about the Mayo Autism Alliance is just another chapter in the never-ending circle of troubled citizens disappointed by the State. Another story of closed doors and cold, inhuman letters of rejection from public servants untroubled by reforming politicians.

If that was the extent of it it might not seem such an insurmountable task, such a cutting slight, but, as members of the Mayo Autism Alliance and others can attest, our State has issued more than one beleaguered family with an invitation to the highest courts in the land, forcing them to fight the State as well as the circumstances of their difficulties.

Today Noel Baker (Page 6) tells us how the Mayo Autism Alliance has decided to open a school and pay its staff because there is no prospect of their children’s needs being met by the State in a timeframe likely to be of any benefit to those who need the service now. He also tells of a family uprooted, moving half the length of the country, to be near the applied behavioural analysis service so badly needed by their three-year-old child.

All of this because of a plodding, drawn-out response from those responsible for providing the relevant services. All because the public service is a law unto itself, all because politicians have not accomplished meaningful reform, sometimes buckling at the merest tinkle from public sector unions’ scabbards.

A short few weeks ago our newspapers bristled with self-congratulating politicians posing with family and supporters on the forecourts of Leinster House. Phrases like “a re-energised Dáil” and “an air of optimism and determination” were the chorus of the day as they assembled to confirm Mr Ahern’s third term as taoiseach.

An increasingly majestical and often-purring taoiseach has said that he believes that his contribution to the establishment of a sort of normality in the North is his finest political achievement. “Nothing will surpass that,” he has said.

What an unambitious thing it is that a leader can say that his finest achievement is behind him and that we cannot expect history in the making, just the usual storms in a teacup, the petty squabbles, the deflecting ambiguities and the lethargy of acceptance. How magnificent it would be, how uplifting and energising, if the Taoiseach would use his tremendous will and stamina, the legendary determination he uses to keep Fianna Fáil in power, to bring about reform in the State he governs on the scale he influenced in the North.

Our society has not had the benefits anticipated from benchmarking or decentralisation and in the Health Minister’s determination to bring co-location to fruition we have an spiriting admission that we expect private enterprise to achieve something we cannot realise through public service.

It is unimaginable that someone as ambitious for Ireland as the Taoiseach would settle for a kind of Rolling Stones premiership, recycling the same old same old ad nauseam, punctuated by third-term disappointments of Blairite proportions. Should he, and his Anointed Dauphin, who most certainly has the stomach for the battle, embark on a crusade of profound reform he would leave a tremendous legacy, earn the gratitude of tens of thousands of families, the Mayo Autism Alliance and many activist groups, and, most likely, the thanks of the majority of public servants who want to do their job in a way that is of real service to their community.

Yes Taoiseach, a lot done but lots, lots more to do.