How much will the Government have achieved in 100 days?

The announcement of the Government plans and the Cabinet has produced the predictable furore as we have finally been given something tangible to criticise, writes Colm O’Regan

AUGUST 19. Put that date in your diaries. Oh hang on, it’s a Friday. Make it the 22nd. That’s the end of the first 100 days. By then the Government should have, according to its own promises, achieved the following: An action plan for housing; established a broadband task force for rural areas; a new winter plan for emergency department overcrowding; an agreement on a reformed budget process; and reduced hospital waiting lists.

One could be cynical and see the programme for government and the 100 days priorities as an example of what happens when you look up in a thesaurus the words ‘commission’, ‘establish’, and ‘plan’. Indeed, there are so many commissions in the works that we may at some stage need to undergo a long and fraught process of decommissioning. Unless it can be shown that commissions by themselves are an important part of the economy and that commissions now employ more people than, say, heavy manufacturing.