You’re right there Michael, yes you’re right — so just do something about it

I GOT some flak last week. Apparently in the column I wrote here I gave the impression that the local and European elections were largely irrelevant, certainly by comparison with some of the major political events that were beginning to unfold.

This was interpreted by some readers as my attempt to discourage people from voting — apparently on the basis that a non-vote is good for the Labour Party.

If I did indeed give that impression, I’m sorry. Nothing is more important or fundamental in a democracy than going out and casting a vote. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life told anyone who they should vote for, just as I’ve never made a secret of my vote — after all, if you’ve been a member of the same political party all your adult life, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to start denying it. But I’ve always argued that no matter how you feel, you have an obligation to vote.

Back in the 1980s my father and I had an argument. He had decided he wasn’t going to vote in the first divorce referendum (to which I was totally committed), because he was simply too torn. As a devout Catholic he couldn’t vote against his Church. As a compassionate and intelligent man, he couldn’t believe what he was hearing from the pulpit, week after week. I knew if he went to vote, he’d end up voting against divorce, so in a way it would have suited me better if he didn’t vote at all. But I still argued that he had to exercise his franchise.

In the end, he told me, he had gone into the ballot box and emerged five minutes later, after writing down what he thought about the whole thing on the back of the ballot paper. He had ticked neither box, and thus had spoiled his vote, but had done his democratic duty nevertheless. In the process, he remained true to his beliefs. His belief in the sanctity of the vote and the democratic process, and his belief in trying to vote according to his conscience and his loyalty.

There’s a lot of us in this election torn by loyalty. I met a man the other day whom I’ve always regarded as wise. He had spent most of the last three weeks out campaigning for his local Labour councillor, a woman who has done much service for her local community. And he had encountered almost nothing but anger. The votes he had garnered, he felt, would be for the person, and not for the party, because the party is widely seen to have abandoned its core principles and values.

Apart from the anger, he felt, the single most common emotion among the electorate was the feeling of being stranded, with no-one left to vote for. People who had voted consistently for the three main political parties in the past all had good reasons not to vote for them again — perhaps never again, but certainly not this time. Voters who were edging towards Sinn Féin were doing so because they had never voted for them before — and therefore, had never felt let down by them before. But it does seem to be the case, in election after election, that everyone we vote for lets us down. No-one, it seems, can live up to our expectations.

I think it’s possible to be loyal and still be a critic. I think it’s impossible to look at some of the things happening in Ireland today and not come to the conclusion that the Government has lost its way. It will undoubtedly get a good kick in the pants in the course of this week, as a disenchanted electorate goes to the polls in anger. The question is, I guess, will it learn any lessons. Because if it doesn’t, it’s doomed.

This Government sees itself — with no small justification — as having saved Ireland and the Irish economy, and put us back on the road to recovery. But for three years now it seems to have blinded itself to the fact that a very heavy price was being paid by those least able to do so. From the very beginning, the austerity budgets it inherited from Brian Lenihan were characterised by a peculiar sort of callousness. That’s coming home to roost now.

I heard Michael Noonan on the radio the other day, expressing surprise at the fact that the HSE were taking medical cards away from people who need them most, and whose lives will be plunged into hardship without them. The crassness of enquiring whether people had recovered from their Down syndrome was being compounded daily by the heartlessness shown to people in real suffering and fear.

“But,” said Michael Noonan, “it seems to me that the HSE has a budget of 13½ billion — there must be better ways of finding 20 million out of that.”

Fair point, Michael. 20 million as a proportion of 13.5 billion is the equivalent of about 1.5 cent in €10. It’s tiny, infinitesimal. It is absurd that so much hardship and anxiety should be caused — and so much political damage, by the way — over such a tiny amount.

But here’s the thing, Michael. You’re the Minister for Finance. You actually have the power and the authority, vested in you by the people, to tell the HSE that.

I can’t understand how ministers can go on the radio and seek to absolve themselves of responsibility for the actions of state agencies by, in effect, announcing that other people are stupid.

At the weekend Peter McVerry, who has deep first-hand experience of these things, said there was a tsunami of homelessness coming at us. Local authority figures published yesterday show a massive increase in the number of families needing housing in just one year. Officially, six new people are becoming homeless every day, and the ways out of homelessness are being systematically shut down.

OUR own experience, in the organisation I work for, is that homelessness is damaging the lives and futures of children. It used to be a phenomenon associated with alcohol or drug misuse in the main — it’s now a feature of the modern Irish economy. The number of families with children in emergency accommodation is increasing steadily. Last November, there were 128 adults with children in emergency accommodation in Dublin — and that figure has surely grown since.

According to Eamon Gilmore, it’s now the highest priority of government. But that in a way sums up the problem. We wait until there’s a massive social crisis, and then we elevate its priority. A month ago, the only priority was the get the water tax right (because it’s really important, for some reason, to bring in a new tax in the middle of an election campaign).

Homelessness has been a priority, and a growing concern, for every day the Government has been in office. So has the efficient and caring management of the health service. So has the provision of decent education services and supports. But it’s only now that they’re beginning to get a look in — when it’s almost too late. That’s why people are so angry.