Cut would be an act of moral cowardice

As a group of something just over 200 people, a group that would have been far larger if others were not at home minding a loved one dependent on their care, protested at Leinster House yesterday over the budget decision to cut the €1,700 annual grant for respite care by €325, the Health Service Executive was advertising for 35 “leadership coaches” to help managers with the “personal transition” promotion might impose on them.

The “coaches” will be assigned to HSE managers “as and when required”.

Just last month the Department of Health sought €245m to balance its €13.6bn budget so hospital beds would not have to close.

Apart at all from the HSE initiative being an affront to basic professionalism, and even if it was not proposed to cut the carers’ allowance, it strikes to the very core of the mindset that has turned this once half-decent country into a dysfunctional, bankrupt entity — why does the HSE promote people who need coaching to do the job? Why are they promoted without showing they have the ability and temperament to take on a new challenge? Were others outside the HSE, others who might be able to do the job without hand-holding, given a chance to apply for the jobs?

As we have said time after time, far more in sadness than anger, it’s just another case of insiders looking after insiders.

As the Leinster House protesters, and others in Ennis, Co Clare, articulated the feelings of the great majority of public opinion yesterday, another time bomb was ticking away. This one has an estimated €100m price tag, a multiple of what might be saved if the cut to carers’ allowances goes ahead. An equal pay claim by 14 civilian clerical workers in Garda stations — representing 7,000 others — has been ruled on by the European Court of Justice and the Government must justify or resolve a €12,000-a-year pay difference.

The claim has been lodged by the CPSU, which represents over 700 Garda female civilian staff and is based on over 200 gardaí being assigned to clerical duties the union claims are similar to those done by civilians. Basically, the civilian workers want the same pay as gardaí doing similar work. That argument seems, when considered by itself, strong enough, but how did those responsible in the Department for Justice give such a hostage to fortune and expose the State to such a liability?

Of course these two instances of our world gone absolutely mad are just cameos in the increasingly indefensible Croke Park fiasco. None of the arguments need to be rehearsed again, a simple statement will suffice.

If our Government, and the individuals who comprise it, insist on cutting the carers’ allowance while refusing to confront the pay, allowances, job security, and pensions enjoyed by the myriad public, semi-State, and quango employees earning over €100,000 a year when all payments are considered, then they will have betrayed the basic principles of decency most of us hold dear.

They will show moral and political cowardice that goes a very long way to explaining why this country, and the idea of society that supports it, is in free fall. All of us are prepared to make sacrifices to rebuild our economy but that does not mean supporting cruelty. There were very many difficult measures in Wednesday’s budget but cutting the carers’ allowance is too cruel and unfair. Do the right thing, Taoiseach, and drop that one proposal; find the money elsewhere.

You know where to look.