C&AG shows why reform is too slow

The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report is a set piece of our public life. Each year it uncovers waste and inefficiency.

Each year it provokes fractious hand-wringing and usually a trenchant statement from some figure in opposition — Fianna Fáil’s John McGuinness obliged this year — demanding action to stop the rot. Unfortunately, this indignation fades fairly quickly because we all know next year’s report will uncover another litany of mismanagement and underachievement.

We move on to the next issue and nothing much changes. Public servants feel put upon one more time, as this report is inevitably negative and success is, if at all, celebrated elsewhere. Some in the private sector, especially those who cannot understand how such waste is tolerated, get hot under the collar over the misuse of taxpayers’ cash and the seeming impossibility of changing it.

There may be an opportunity just over the horizon to confront the structures and culture that each year throws up such disheartening and unaffordable waste. The prospect of a revised Croke Park deal might be an opportunity to try to break the cycle of the C&AG’s yearly admonishment and address some of the issues raised by John McGuinness in his capacity as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. It might answer too his accusation, echoed by a huge number of disappointed voters, that reform is not being driven with the urgency or force required.

So what might change before a Croke Park II (CPII) is agreed? Its champions will say little enough, but those who oppose it simply won’t accept that. That second position will have new leverage because any CPII would run to the next election and the coalition parties will be judged on whether it has led to real change, whether it has exacerbated or confronted the dangerous polarisation of this society.

The issue about the pace of reform could be addressed simply enough by removing the veto on pay cuts and redundancies. The prospect of either of those regrettable measures would focus minds now wandering between what ifs and maybes. Allied to a strict timetable agreed before CPII was endorsed that change should accelerate change. Would negotiations with hospital consultants have dragged on and concluded without pay cuts to incumbents if these options had been available?

CPII should have truly independent auditors rather than a cabal of former union and semi-state representatives. The private sector must be involved as current arrangements are not credible.

Maybe a non-Labour minister for reform would be worth considering too as Brendan Howlin’s abject failure to meet targets he set himself on cutting allowances epitomises the glacial pace of change and rabbits-in-the-headlights shoulder-shrugging when hard decisions must be made.

It might persuade workers in the private sector that CPII might have social rather than sectional benefits if it led to one of their great worries — pensions — being taken seriously by Government through the appointment of a pensions minister who might be bring some sanity or equity, maybe even hope, to that worrying area.

There are many, many opportunities to benefit all concerned, but unless the nettle is grasped and the process widened beyond today’s circled wagons, unless the pace matches the urgency of our situation, then the C&AG report will be as disheartening as this week’s for years to come.