If I play Dave, will you help me to follow the State money trail?

DO you remember Dave? Dave was an ordinary guy, a good citizen. He was plucked from obscurity because of his uncanny resemblance to the president of the United States.

It was Dave’s misfortune that the president needed a double. And then, through the sort of twist of fate that can only happen in the movies, the real president has a massive stroke, his henchmen decide that it’s in the national interest that no-one should find out, and Dave suddenly finds himself having to act as president of his country.

Dave was a movie, of course. The actor Kevin Kline played both the ordinary citizen, thrust into hugely onerous responsibility, and the president, and played both parts brilliantly.

I’ve been thinking about Dave over the past week because I’ve noticed that some of our newspapers have taken to asking very rich people, rather than ordinary citizens, what they would do if they were running the country.

Joe Duffy may have started it because every time I turn on Liveline he appears to be talking to Ben Dunne about how to solve all our problems.

But the Irish Times gave Denis O’Brien the space to offer his solutions last week and the Sunday Independent followed suit by interviewing Michael O’Leary about how he would cure our temporarily ailing economy (O’Leary offered his views after first telling the newspaper that politicians didn’t need advice from rich people).

There was some stuff in Denis O’Brien’s piece I wouldn’t agree with, but it was an honest and balanced effort. Michael O’Leary’s interview, on the other hand, appeared to consist of the suggestion that we should fire thousands of public servants and reduce the salaries of all the rest. Apart from the effing and blinding (at least as quoted by the Sunday Independent), that seemed to be all he had to offer.

But I’m not sure what it is that makes Denis O’Brien or Michael O’Leary more qualified to offer solutions than other citizens who care about their country.

Sure, they’ve made a lot of money, but there’s more to running a country than the bottom line. When you’re in charge in a democracy, you have as many shareholders as there are citizens, and you have to obey some of the rules that only apply to democracies.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people is not an operating procedure that would work in too many boardrooms. But democracy ceases to have meaning when the bottom line is the only thing that counts. That’s not an argument for spending as if there was no tomorrow, or even for gratuitous taxation. But the purpose of government is to manage its affairs wisely and well. That means managing the overall economy to the extent that it’s within its control, and managing its own spending prudently.

When Michael O’Leary wants to cut costs to make his airline more profitable, he doesn’t cut across the board.

The slash-and-burn technique he advocates for public spending would have disastrous consequences for him and his company if he were to adopt it at Ryanair. He sets out to keep unnecessary costs to an absolute minimum, but what would happen if he were ever to cut spending on all the things that make an airplane safe in the air? Apart from unmentionable disaster, it would simply be the end of his business, and he knows that full well.

No, he concentrates, as I said, on unnecessary costs. And that’s where Dave comes in. There’s a scene in the movie where Dave, as president, is confronted with terrible choices.

In order to balance the budget, his advisers tell him, he’s going to have to sign an order abandoning some very important and useful social programmes. They can be done away with at the stroke of a pen, and it’s only little people who benefit from them anyway. The people who will suffer probably don’t even vote.

Dave rebels. He gathers the cabinet together and tells them he will only make the cut after they spend a bit of time going through the budget, and seeing if there is any really unnecessary spending there. And he forces them to work through the night, going through the budget line by line — and the budget is a huge computer printout.

By morning, exhausted but proud, they have found enough savings to ensure that Dave’s social programmes are saved.

We can all be Dave. In a way, it’s a citizen’s responsibility anyway to be aware of what’s being spent and how it’s being spent. And it’s easy. Every penny our Government spends is contained in a single book — the Revised Book of Estimates. It’s available (or should be) in the local library, and you can download it from the web, at www.finance.gov.ie (just click on Financial and Economic Information and you’ll see Estimates of Public Expenditure and all the instructions on how to download it).

And it’s not a big thick printout either — it’s about 284 pages, or roughly the same size as a novel. I’m not claiming that it’s quite as much a page-turner as a novel would be, but it’s certainly simple and direct enough. The book outlines the details of 41 separate ‘votes’ which cover all the day-to-day activities of Government.

They’re called votes because they can only come into effect after they have been voted through the Dáil — although usually that just means they’re called out.

Despite a requirement in the constitution that the Dáil must “consider” the estimates, there is seldom, if ever, an actual vote on any of them, and they tend to be scrutinised in detail only after the money has been spent.

Incidentally, they’re also called estimates because that’s what they are. The Government never tells us in advance how much they’re going to spend — only how much they hope to spend.

THERE are legal requirements that force government departments back into the Dáil if they look like they’re going to overspend by a significant amount — but somehow those legal requirements haven’t managed to prevent some of the fiascos of recent years.

Over the next week or so, I’m going to be Dave in this column. I’m going to work my way through the Book of Estimates, vote by vote.

I’m inviting you to do the same — it’s our opportunity to take a good long look at how the Government spends our money, and maybe if enough of us do it the Government might notice as it prepares its spending plans for next year.

Of course, unlike Dave, we won’t have the cabinet sitting around a table as we work our way through the book. So we won’t be able to find out if they really know what every penny is spent on, or if they have their priorities straight in their heads. But I’ve looked at the book already, and I reckon each of us could ask a few hard questions.

So, if anyone else wants to be Dave, you have to do a little homework before next Tuesday. Just log on, download the book and start reading. You’ll be astonished at what you find, and maybe next week we can all compare conclusions.