Yes minister, honesty is the right policy

This Government continues to demonstrate its enormous facility for making U-turns, not only with its election promises, but also with plans announced after deliberate consideration.

In fairness, it should be recognised that obstinacy is often a political vice rather than an administrative virtue.

There are times when government must make hard decisions and stick to them, but nobody should adhere to wrong decisions. Politicians, like everybody else, are fallible, and there is something admirable and refreshing about ministers having the gumption to admit that they made a mistake.

Education Minister Ruairí Quinn has asked for a review of the planned cuts in teaching posts in disadvantaged areas. The DEIS (Delivering Equality of Opportunity in Schools) programme, which was introduced in 2005, currently covers 670 primary and 195 post-primary schools. The programme has been shown to be particularly successful.

As the Irish Examiner noted yesterday, three different reports have indicated advances in both literacy and numeracy in the primary schools involved. Mr Quinn has acknowledged this and stressed that “the DEIS scheme is going to stay intact”.

What he has announced is an impact analysis in relation to extra teachers, outside the DEIS programme, that were assigned to those schools. He had called for this analysis to be completed within four weeks.

His acknowledgement that there will have to be changes is an admission that he and his department got the initial decision wrong. It was announced in the December budget that 428 teaching posts would be cut, but the minister now admits that that number will not have to be so drastic. At the same time, however, he warned that it will be necessary to introduce other cuts in different areas of education in order to facilitate the necessary changes.

There is no question that there have to be cuts. “I don’t have extra resources,” the minister stressed. “I have to take resources from somewhere else within my budget.”

The minister’s decision marks the second U-turn that the Government has already made on the budget. Proposed cuts in disability allowances were withdrawn after backbench members of Fine Gael and the Labour Party made representations to Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton.

This week we already had a grotesque example of the profligate consequences of obstinate stupidity in relation to the €54.7 million wasted on the purchase and storage of 7,500 voting machines for the most of the past decade. Some of the machines were used on a trial basis, but the bulk of them were never used at all.

The educational changes will not come into force until September, so the Government has time on its side. It can therefore be commended for tackling this mistake promptly.