Home-help cuts - Croke Park deal must be confronted

Health Minister Dr James Reilly can expect to be dragged over the coals — at the very least — at today’s Cabinet meeting because of his proposals to cut €130m from home care and support programmes. But in a typical Irish denial of reality, those cuts — unacceptable and shaming as they are — are not the real issue at all.

Dr Reilly’s ham-fisted communication practice, deliberate or otherwise, is not the issue either but in this instance it seems so very blunt that it raises a simple question — has he picked this issue to finally confront the dichotomy of the Croke Park protections and the mandate given by the electorate to his Government to reform our public affairs?

Any rational appraisal, no matter what the champions of Croke Park insist, would conclude that reform means reform of an entire system, not just the 15% of the health budget outside Croke Park’s circle of wagons. This argument stands despite assurances that the deal is delivering reform and the required savings, because these assertions have not been independently audited or confirmed. Indeed they have been challenged by some who suggest the savings are nothing like those claimed. Yes, and this is terribly unfortunate, trust is at that low ebb in this society.

Something between 80% and 85% of our €13bn or so health budget is protected by Croke Park, so this puts the protests by Labour deputies, and some from Fine Gael too, outside the realm of joined-up thinking.

Of course they are right to demand that these services be protected — they must be — but their argument is made irrelevant by their insistence that public sector pay rates, specifically those at the very highest levels, cannot be reviewed as part of a programme to protect vital and cost-effective services. In our reduced circumstances, demanding one without doing the other is dishonest and dangerous wishful thinking.

Unless today’s Cabinet meeting confronts that contradiction, it will just be another testy stand-off where the inevitable will be deferred again. It will mean too that some of the measures in December’s budget may be more severe than they might be if Government could act with a free hand.

Already, there is dangerous talk of an early election. That would resolve nothing, nor would it improve our public finances. At this terrible point, any party that would force an election to protect Croke Park — and have no doubt, that is what they would be doing — would deserve the most severe judgement from the electorate.

By the end of today’s meeting, we will know if we have a coalition equal to the challenges of our times, a coalition capable of protecting vital services but equally capable of confronting entrenched special interests. A fudge would be the worst possible outcome.

Of course the collapse of this coalition may not mean an election. It is just possible, though very unlikely, that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil might at last shake off the ghosts of their past and come together to do what they both say is their primary objective — to act in the best interests of the country. However, vanity, self-interest and the lust for power make that as likely as Labour confronting their friends in the public sector unions.

What a sorry point we have reached.