Government might as well move its entire business behind closed doors

I HAVE to tell you something.

This isn’t something I like to admit readily because I’m supposed to be in the know about stuff. But I just don’t know what’s going on. Some of the recent decisions made in our name are nothing short of absurd. And some of the behaviour of the powers-that-be is completely inexplicable. Let me give you a couple of examples.

Example 1. In the aftermath of the budget I heard a man on radio say that between himself and his wife they were reasonably well paid couple, both employed in the private sector. They could afford, he said, to make a bigger contribution. Instead, the only impact the budget had on him was to lower the cost of his bottle of wine.

Well, I’ve news for that man, especially if he’s a smoker. The budget also lowered the cost of tobacco. The VAT reduction announced in December, which is taking effect now, has lowered the cost of a packet of cigarettes by two or three cent on average. Just think about that for a second. The toughest budget in the history of the country took money from the pockets of some of the lowest income families while at the same time actually reducing the cost of alcohol and tobacco.

It’s crazy. The justification that will be offered, of course, is the whole business of smuggling and cross-border trade. But in truth it simply makes no sense whatever, from any perspective — health policy, social policy, economic policy — to make tobacco cheaper than it used to be at a time when the country desperately needs revenue. The reduction per packet of cigarettes may not be huge, but when it’s added up it comes to a tidy sum.

The Government expects the overall VAT reduction to cost €140 million this year and €167m in a full year. And of course the excise reductions on alcohol will cost another €90m.

Maybe you can understand why a hard-pressed government feels the need to reduce the price of alcohol and tobacco — something that, to my knowledge, never happened when the exchequer was rolling in cash. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a complete mystery.

Example 2. All through last weekend there were severe water shortages throughout Dublin and in other parts of the country. Ironic, of course — we all know the line from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, “water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink”. Nor any drop to wash children or even, in some cases, allow elderly people to have a cup of tea.

You never realise how often you turn on a tap until it’s dry. We can go into the reasons for the water shortage another time, although I don’t want to hear any more lectures on the radio about how it’s my responsibility to conserve water.

Actually, and especially in a First World country that has had the resources to invest, a decent, regular supply of clean, treated water is everyone’s right.

The problems we’re having right now have nothing to do with individual households wasting water, any more than they have to do with longer term climate change. Old, clapped-out infrastructure hasn’t been able to withstand cold weather, and our system simply couldn’t cope — any more than they were able to cope with the roads and traffic during the cold weather itself.

But if they can do nothing else, surely they can communicate. I spent a while on Sunday looking up the websites of the local authorities in the Dublin area and the surrounding counties.

And all of them, it has to be said, were conveying up-to-the-minute information. I even rang a few of the emergency numbers and they were answered promptly and courteously.

But government websites? Forget it. If you log on to the Department of the Environment website you’re invited to read Minister Gormley’s Copenhagen blog (I passed).

Go to their customer service section and you can read the customer service plan and the Irish language policy. Not a word about how to conserve water, how to deal with frozen pipes, how to cope with an airlock in your system. There isn’t even advice about how to contact your local authority.

This is, of course, all of a piece with the attitude of the Government during the big freeze. For days ministers went around saying “nothing to do with me, guv” whenever anyone asked who was going to take responsibility. There was no communication from government then and there’s none now.

Thank goodness the local authorities are doing their best because if they were waiting for political leadership and example, even in the matter of communication, they’d be waiting a long time.

Example 3. The Government U-turn on the cervical cancer issue. This was announced at a press conference last week, apparently on the basis that successful negotiations and a tendering process had reduced the price of the drugs involved in protecting young girls.

According to the Minister for Health, Mary Harney, it would have cost €16m to vaccinate every first-year student in Ireland last year (that’s around 30,000 girls) and now it will cost around €3m.

But HIQA, the independent agency that examined this issue in detail, said last year that a national vaccination programme made available to all 12-year-old girls in Ireland would cost between €9m and €10m.

Now, having negotiated that down a bit (assuming you can take the figures given out at a press conference at face value, without seeing the tender documents), the vaccine, hopefully, will be made available to all first years in secondary schools later this year. Sadly, it will not be made available to the second years who should have got it last year.

YES, I can understand a policy U-turn like this — I only wish the U-turn hadn’t been necessary in the first place. What I really can’t understand is the attempt to paint the U-turn as some kind of victory. Anyone who wants to can listen to the minister’s press conference on this subject on the Department of Health website. If you’re expecting to hear the minister apologising for the year-long delay in introducing the vaccine, or expressing relief that she can do it at last this year, forget it.

Example 4. The “will there — won’t there?” controversy about a public inquiry into the collapse of our banking sector, the policy decisions that drove banks into competitive and crazy overdrive and the regulatory malfunctions that helped to drive the entire system to the wall.

There is no other country in the democratic world where government politicians would be allowed to get away with a behind-closed-doors inquiry into something as serious as this, where public policy decisions were at the core of the disaster. But apparently, that’s what the Government is contemplating. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

And so incomprehensible. But that’s where I started this column. The way in which public policy is being conducted in Ireland is becoming more and more of a mystery. We might as well do it all behind closed doors for all the sense it makes.