Minister, an awful lot of people need to see your caring side now
You’ve already had lots of battles, I’m sure, during the estimates campaign.
Even though we tend not to hear a lot about what’s going on during that process, I know from previous experience that you will have been confronted by ministers from all over the place who have argued that their priorities are make-or-break for the whole Government.
As a former line minister yourself, you’ll be only too well aware that ministers from all departments have been wired to the moon by their senior civil servants. It remains the case, as it always has been, that some civil servants judge their ministers only by how well they manage to protect the department’s budget.
You were a dab hand at protecting the budget of every department you served in yourself, so you know the game. And now you’re a sort of poacher-turned-gamekeeper, the man who has to say no to all sorts of ambitions.
I suppose you’ve probably been telling them all that this is a particularly difficult year and that the slowdown in the economy, coupled with a big hit to consumer confidence, means this is a year for tightening belts. No doubt there’s some truth in that, but you know better than most that it’s not the whole story.
I meet all sorts of people, just like you do. And there seems to be a psychology out there, a fear that we’re somehow back in the 1980s. I don’t know if you were watching RTÉ on Sunday night, but they showed two editions of Reeling in the Years back to back, covering 1982 and 1983.
They were possibly the worst years you and I can remember, characterised by political instability and bitter rows about constitutional reform. (Incidentally, I must say I enjoyed the sight of your current boss, who at the end of 1982 was the outgoing government chief whip, telling the TV cameras that the worst thing any government could do was depend on the support of independent deputies).
But the main feature of those years was an economy that seemed to be in free-fall. Dunlops in Cork closed in 1983, and it was quickly followed, as you remember, by Fords and Verolme Dockyard. Those closures were like a kick in the stomach to the city’s confidence, to the point that it took years to recover from them. But tens of thousands of people all over Ireland joined the dole queues in those years, and tens of thousands more left the country. I worked for the Government during the middle 1980s, so I know how tough it was — and I know how few public policy choices there were back then.
But that’s why, in a way, I wanted to make one key point to you. We were a poor country then and our economy was going backwards. We’re a rich country now and our economy is still growing, though not as fast. It was Franklin D Roosevelt who coined the phrase, in even harder times in America, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
That phrase keeps popping into my head every time I hear the doom-and-gloom merchants on the radio, or the spokespeople for powerful vested interests, announcing that you have no choice now but to screw down as hard as you can on public spending.
Better management of public spending, and especially the elimination of waste, is undoubtedly necessary. But we still don’t have enough teachers, nurses, doctors, educational psychologists, speech and language therapists and others to meet pressing and urgent social needs.
We still lag behind the rest of the OECD in what we spend on education, especially on early years education — and that’s despite the fact that every penny spent in those years is repaid a dozen times over to the economy in the longer term.
We’re still a rich enough country to be able to tackle some of our core problems. And to do it with confidence rather than out of fear.
The thing is — and with your experience you know this better than me — there are easy ways to control public spending and there are hard ways. The hard way requires management, consultation, control, leadership. Eliminating the waste and getting bureaucracy under control would be two areas that would require all those things.
The easy way is to draw a pen through programmes where nobody is going to protest, or where nobody is able to protest.
I remember a few years ago, for instance, where the home help services run by the health boards were effectively slashed.
Everyone in receipt of home help assistance was told they were going to get a couple of hours less a week. The result was a saving of a few bob, and it happened without a peep of protest because the constituency affected by it had no powerful lobby to speak up on their behalf. There have been times in the past when things like free fuel were cut back simply because it was easy to do. The fact that people suffered out of all proportion to the miserly savings that were made didn’t seem to bother some of your predecessors.
There’s always a temptation, isn’t there, when the money is tight to make cuts of that kind, to make cuts that affect people without a voice?
BUT the reality, of course, is that it is precisely when the general economy gets a bit tougher, when those of us with mortgages and household bills start to worry about what’s going on at home, that people who are really vulnerable need a bit more support.
And as you formulate your budget without the luxury of the high growth rates of previous years (but still as the minister in charge of a rich and growing economy), that must be something that weighs heavily with you.
As a Minister for Health in the past, and in your time in your present job, you have established a deserved reputation as someone with a social conscience, someone who believes in the importance of community.
Between now and budget day, which is only a fortnight away tomorrow, you’ll hear a lot of voices urging you to leave your social conscience to one side so that more powerful and vocal interests can have their way.
If I might be so impertinent as to say so, minister, don’t do it. You know there are still problems out there and you know we have the resources to help people and communities that are struggling. More than most ministers, you’ve shown an ability and willingness in the past to develop planned and structured solutions.
People with a disability need those solutions still. So do the 100,000 children who live in consistent poverty. So do elderly people uncertain about what is going to happen to them.
You’re their lifeline, minister. You may not hear their raised voices above the clamour of special interests, but they’re all depending on you.
With best wishes.
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