Mick Clifford: Varadkar has a taxing time lashing out at inconvenient truths

We can all put our hands to our ears and pretend it's not happening but those who lead have a responsibility to prepare for massive change

Leo Varadkar’s comments were described by housing charity Threshold as ‘very unhelpful’, setting a precedent for how politicians might react to future commissions in areas such as housing.

Leo Varadkar reached in to his inner Michael Gove this week. During the Brexit referendum in 2016, Gove famously said that “the people of this country have had enough of experts”.

What Gove was really conveying was that he didn’t want to hear what the experts had to say about how Brexit would impact on the economy because it conflicted with his political aims. He was, in effect, putting his hands up to his ears as might a five-year-old who prefers to hear only what he wants about the big, bad world out there.

During the week, Varadkar had a tantrum of sorts. Within hours of the publication of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, the Tánaiste dismissed much of its content as “coming straight out of the Sinn Féin manifesto”.

One of the commission’s 116 proposals is for an increase in inheritance tax. “There’s no way that’s going to happen while Fine Gael are in government,” Varadkar said.

Such a hot take from a politician who portrays himself as a bulwark of responsible governance in a time of uncertainty is quite stunning.

One of the members of the commission, the CEO of the housing charity Threshold, John Mark McCafferty, was duly stunned.

He told Kieran Cuddihy’s Newstalk programme that the comments were “very unhelpful”and set a “serious precedent” for how politicians might react to future commissions in areas such as housing.

“I think the comments were dismissive and think they politicise, and I think they were inappropriate,” he said.

“It’s really important that for wider society when these reports are put together that there is a level of respect, that there is a level of time to digest those reports, and to see them in the context in which they have been drawn up and written.”

The commission was set up last year to compile evidence as to how best to face into a highly uncertain future. The planet is burning, the population is getting older, major change in how we live is on the way. Your first instinct on hearing these things may well be to turn down the volume and that is entirely understandable.

However, those who lead, who wield power, have a responsibility to today’s youth, and the unborn generations to come, to at least prepare for this massive change.

In that vein, the commission was set up to examine how best all of this may be paid for in a way that is both sustainable and fair.

Who appointed the members of this commission that Leo feels was loaded with Shinners? That well-known republican socialist, Paschal Donohoe.

Report based on common sense

The whole thrust of the report is based on common sense. There is no controversy about the requirement to broaden the tax base. Equally, there is an acceptance that taxes on income affects jobs and therefore new revenue should be garnered through capital taxes, property taxes, and social insurance.

On the welfare side, there are also sensible proposals, most notably in structuring childcare supports and placing greater emphasis on helping those who are frequently referred to as the working poor. What’s there to dispute? Of course, nobody is suggesting that these measures be implemented right now in the throes of a cost-of-living crisis, but surely the planning for the future must get under way.

The reality is that the report makes for uncomfortable reading because it is delivering inconvenient truths. And the overarching truth is that everybody is going to have to pay more taxes.

Just to repeat that, everybody is going to have to pay more taxes. Not just the rich, as Sinn Féin would have it, but everybody.

The means by which developed countries have measured progress is going to have to change. We cannot continue to live as we have been doing for decades if not centuries. Climate change is the most urgent issue, but even if that could be arrested in the morning, there is no changing the demographics in western countries like ours that are going to see less people working to support more.

Last Tuesday, the latest missive from the goddamn experts landed with a report from the World Meteoroligical Organisation. It pointed out that the physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change “will be increasingly devastating” on the planet.  Responding to the findings, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said that “climate impacts are heading into uncharted territories of destruction”. 

The experts' reports on climate change do not make easy reading but they cannot be ignored.

The reaction here and in most other wealthy countries? Hands to the ears.

Last month, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council reported that young people will have to pay an extra €2,500 annually in taxes in order to maintain the current retirement age of 66. The Pensions Commission arrived at similar conclusions last year. Why can’t these experts just keep their inconvenient truths to themselves? The only solution really is hands to ears.

This time around, Varadkar instead stomped his feet, lashed out at the truths, and accused the commission members of a political agenda. So what’s going to happen the next time the Government decides to set up an independent body to conduct research that might inform evidence-based policy? Who is going to put their hand up to serve if there is a likelihood that a senior government figure may trash the work within hours of its publication?

Varadkar is not alone in trying to wish away the future. Sinn Féin doesn’t want to hear these truths either because the party’s whole political thrust is to tell everybody that things will be grand and the “elite” will stump up to keep the show on the road.

Fianna Fáil veer towards either the Shinners or the Gaelers’ respective positions, depending on the day of the week.

Fine Gael has most to lose

However, it is the Fine Gael leader who has most at stake when these issues arise. In recent months, possibly in response to falling support in opinion polls, Varadkar has been trying valiantly to carve out a political space for his party. He has focused his pitch on reducing taxes and casting Sinn Féin as irredeemable purveyors of a ruinous form of socialism.

Both prongs of attack are rooted in the past and ignore current realities. The tax reduction agenda worked a treat for Bertie Ahern and the Progressive Democrats 20 years ago, in another political lifetime. Back then Sinn Féin was socialist, pointing towards Cuba as an exemplar of good and fair government. Today, the party espouses a bog-standard centre-left agenda wrapped in a cloak of nationalism. 

There are legitimate questions about Sinn Féin’s power structure, wealth, and refusal to acknowledge past wrongs, but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that in government the party would risk toppling what is a delicately balanced economic model.

Yet, chasing the past would appear to be all that Leo has got to play with. Whatever he is at, he needs to be a bit more careful than he was this week when he attempted to undermine an independent body doing some service for the State.

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