No-one will win if the Government loosens the budget purse strings

Beneath the palaver about budgetary arithmetic and you find a shark-like instinct for political survival. Deadlines famously focus the mind, and there is no deadline is like a looming election.

No election is imminent of course. But the general election campaign has effectively begun. Once local and European elections are over, the psychological step-change kicks in. Mid-term elections are like burying a parent. You know you have moved into the waiting room of the funeral parlour. It may be a while, but it’s now inevitable. You have a sense of your own mortality; it’s do or die.

This government is haunted by the loss of office in 1997. Its four key members were ministers then. Joan Burton was a junior minister who lost her seat. Enda Kenny, Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin were in cabinet. It was a reasonably competent government whose policies were largely prudent. Unforced errors, however, and a lack-lustre campaign saw them lose office by a whisker. Bertie Ahern formed a minority government, on apparently shaky foundations, including four independent TDs. Many, including some prominent in the outgoing government, didn’t think it could last until Christmas. In the event it was 14 long years before Kenny, Burton, Noonan and Howlin enjoyed a second coming. They have no intention of letting go again.

It’s a morality tale observing how politicians change over the course of an electoral cycle. This government came into office full of good intentions and an unprecedented majority. On the economy, they have largely delivered on their good intentions to date. It’s a truism to say they deserve credit. They didn’t write The National Recovery Plan. Fianna Fáil and the Greens did that. But, having inherited it, they continued it in tough times. The rewards are beginning to be seen on their watch, so they get the credit; that’s fair enough. If the economy was going belly-up, they would get the blame.

The difference now, of course is one of timing and a newfound lack of constraint. Back at the beginning, they looked ahead at an expanse of five long years in government, and no room to manoeuvre with the Troika. Now the reins are on the horse’s neck, and the finish line is in sight. Constraint with the public finances is melting imperceptibly into incontinence. True, a neutral budget will not bust the recovery yet. But it will do two things.

Firstly it will cop-out on the right choice to reduce the government deficit aggressively and maximise our headroom in the event of an external economic shock. Tax cuts and additional spending are based on borrowing and adding further to dangerously high debt. It’s driving at speed on bald tyres and hoping you can still cut the corners without coming off the road. That’s what we did before, and we are still picking up the debris. Emigrants strewn around the world are the economic equivalent of dead bodies. Maybe more depressing, are people who couldn’t pick up and leave. They are unemployed, in debt — or both — and in varying degrees of indentured misery. Secondly, it signals back-to-where-you-were in our political culture. And that recidivism has trickled down from the cabinet table to nearly every County Council chamber in the country. Good intentions, have yielded to impure thoughts.

Timing has a lot to do with fortitude in politics. It is at its zenith at the start of the cycle but slips away thereafter. There was fortitude in Kerry on Monday. Sam Maguire came home to the Kingdom for the 37th time. The Kerry minors were triumphant too. The first time since 1980 that one county has won both football titles, and that was Kerry then! As the players paraded their silverware, a harder match was fought in the County Council chamber.

In the face of a charge at what Sinn Féin mistakenly thought was an open goal, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour councillors stood firm against their proposal to reduce property tax by 15%. In fact a reduction of a mere 4% that would have meant Council revenues were equivalent to last year, which itself was a historic low for many years, in funding. On an annual property charge of between 250 and 300 a 4% cut would save a household the princely sum of 10-12 per year. It would have deprived the Council and its strained services of 600,000. The 15% cut that Sinn Féin actually proposed would have cost Kerry more than 2 million. There is a reason they win in Kerry. They know you have to prepare, plan and invest. Sinn Féin economics was the equivalent of spending the night before the big match in the pub swilling pints.

What exactly were the services that Sinn Féin proposed to axe in Kerry? Was it the ’welcome home’, which the council facilitated for the winning teams on Monday? Was it the Kerry Sports and Recreation Partnership which invests in sport across the county? Maybe it was support for Kerry’s 12 Blue Flag beaches that its tourism depends on? We don’t know; we weren’t told. To their credit most Kerry councillors weren’t having any of it. They play a team game there. Kerry Mayor John Brassil played a blinder rounding up the numbers, togging them out in the county jersey and seeing Sinn Féin off the pitch.

There is a reason Kerry wins but others lose. In Dublin Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Sinn Féin councillors came together to force through a property charge cut of 15%. Labour weren’t far behind, proposing a cut of 7.5%. Only Green councillor Ciarán Cuffe had the testicular fortitude to stand up and call it “auction politics at its worst”. The cut has cost the capital city 12 million. It’s not a once-off. Unless it’s reversed, it’s off the base and rolls on in perpetuity. I live in Dublin’s north inner city. It has a lot of charm. It’s also a litter black spot and the dog dirt capital of the world. Litter wardens are only one service deficit. Walk the streets at night, and see the homeless sleeping in doorways. That’s the grandeur of Dublin, being led by its councillors into civic squalor.

The local authority service cuts that are now inevitable because of reductions in the local property charge, will be strongly protested by the very parties which caused them. The broader agenda is licensed by a government narrative that fundamentally lost its nerve amidst a series of self-made cock-ups earlier this year. Fianna Fáil has effectively abandoned the National Recovery Plan, including a property tax it authored in Government. It is trying to play catch-up and win a race to the bottom with Sinn Féin, but will fail miserably. Sinn Féin, in leading the charge to slash services across the country, has shafted its core constituency most dependent on those services for a headline. But that’s life. Its show time for slow learners.