Croke Park - Talks need an injection of urgency

For some the Croke Park deal epitomises all that is wrong in this country.

For others the agreement is a positive revolution in the way Government manages ever-scarcer resources, provides services and interacts with its employees and the citizens of the state.

Proponents of those diametrically opposed views have reached a degree of certainty that is irrational. Those certainties have polarised society and may have decreed an unfortunate and unacceptable conclusion — a failure to sufficiently reform our public services, put them on a sustainable financial footing, maintain or improve services and, and this may be the highest bar of all, convince those outside the Croke Park loop their interests are afforded the same weight as those directly involved.

Yesterday, as the Taoiseach became involved in what now looks like it may be the defining round of negotiations in Croke Park I, some things have been established. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin’s repeated and very public commitment — as well as those of other Cabinet members — to the process may be reassuring to those who support it but to others it represents an ideological bias, a commitment to process rather than achievement. Indeed, so great is the commitment — an open-ended one it seems — that it may weaken Government’s hand. That idea is strengthened by the prospect of a Croke Park II, an idea that would turn kicking that infamous can down the road into something akin to a national sport. It would also raise a simple enough question — what might CPII achieve that CPI could not? Is it possible that the prospect of a CPII might even encourage more and more can kicking rather than hard decisions?

That the Irish Hospital Consultants’ Association and the HSE were still, as late as yesterday, talking about reforms promised for early next month, and the bizarre IHCA position that allows individual consultants to adopt or ignore the reforms, suggests that it might.

It seems incomprehensible that these talks, and those about drug prices and payments from health insurance companies, are dragging on and on as the HSE careers towards a €0.5bn overrun for the year.

One cabinet member however seems to have adopted a new approach and it must be assumed that this has not been done independently but rather to show what might transpire if the pace of reform remains glacial.

Yesterday Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar said he will not give CIÉ the €36m it needs to keep the buses running until the company deals with its cost overruns. Mr Varadkar, who said he could not “in clear conscience” hand over the money until the CIÉ companies and the unions “do their bit”, may be playing his part in a good-cop-bad-cop routine but his position will win far more support than its opponents might imagine.

Whichever position you take one thing is certain — if this country is to have any real prospect of recovery this Croke Park deal must be an agent for considerable change. Unfortunately some of those involved have yet to show the sense of urgency that demands.