Beware the secrets and the spin — crude cutbacks are on the way

The squeeze has begun. And guess what? The cutbacks are going to be crude and simple. And they’re going to hurt people who have no one to speak up for them. And they’re going to be counterproductive

THIS is always how the squeeze begins. In stealth. Usually accompanied by jargon and gobbledygook. Almost never accompanied by a straightforward announcement. A hidden circular, a secret letter, a coded message. Nobody ever stands up and says: “The Department of Finance has told us that we have to cut back this year because they’re not going to reach their targets.”

But that’s what all these announcements and letters mean. We are going to see a period of cutbacks now. The squeeze has begun. And guess what? The cutbacks are going to be crude and simple. And they’re going to hurt people who have no one to speak up for them. And they’re going to be counterproductive.

Example 1: An announcement appears on the Department of Education website. It’s not simple, nor accessible.

It’s to be found under the list of circulars they send out constantly, listed as circular number 0010/2008, and it’s called “Regulations governing the appointment and retention of teachers in primary schools for the school year 2008/09”.

At first glance it seems harmless. There is no accompanying press release — the newspapers have to find out about it for themselves.

But when it’s translated into English, and when principals begin to apply it to the situations in their schools, the real meaning becomes clear. Nearly 150 schools will lose teachers in the new academic year.

The plan to reduce class sizes in primary schools is gone. It wasn’t so much a plan, more a very specific commitment. It’s there, on page 42 of the Programme for Government. Because, it says, “this Government sees education as central to achieving our goals of protecting and growing Ireland’s prosperity and ensuring greater social inclusion”.

“We will increase the number of primary teachers by at least 4,000. This will enable us to reduce class sizes. The staffing schedule will be reduced from a general rule of at least one teacher for every 27 pupils in 2007/08, by one point a year, to one for every 24 children by 2010/11.”

That commitment, and the programme, was signed by three people. Bertie Ahern, Mary Harney — and Trevor Sargent (remember him?). None of them have had a word to say about the abandonment of that promise. Their real message, of course, is simple enough. “Sorry. Not going to happen. We know it was only last year — actually only nine months ago. We know we agonised for several weeks over the Programme for Government, and there was great fanfare when we signed it.

“We know the ink isn’t even dry on the document. But that promise is gone now, and there’ll be more. Cutbacks, you know. You didn’t really think we were serious about the Programme for Government, did you?”

And by the way, they could add, if they were willing to, that they also know that cutbacks that damage primary education are particularly counter-productive, because they have knock-on effects on children and young people right through all the years of their education. But cutbacks in Ireland never have logic to them.

Example 2: The Secretary General of the Department of Health writes to the Head of the HSE, Professor Brendan Drumm. The letter is written in January, but of course is not intended for publication. It takes several months for this letter to find its way into the newspapers.

It’s written in classic civil service gobbledegook, using language like “the financial framework which accompanied the HSE national service plan... we are all agreed that your 2008 national service plan has been prepared on the basis that the planned level of services can be delivered with your allocation”.

The department indicates in the letter that it has, in its own view, provided enough funding for a “demographically adjusted existing level of service”.

When all that is translated into English, it transpires that the HSE told the department that it would need €450 million more in 2008 to maintain services at the level of 2007 — and the 2007 services already included cutbacks. The department replies that they know all that, but tough. The HSE isn’t getting it. Naturally, of course, this correspondence isn’t accompanied by a press release either.

When you go back to the Programme for Government, that document signed with all the fanfare nine months ago, you find that seven pages are devoted to healthcare.

There’s going to be new investment in this, that and the other thing. Every problem known to man, and ventilated during the election campaign, is going to be sorted. There’s no mention anywhere of frozen budgets, of the HSE being unable to fill a single vacancy, of two years of cutbacks starting almost the moment the Programme for Government was signed. No mention anywhere of a financial squeeze that would force the HSE to start contemplating the closure of A&E units (imagine if that had been announced during the election!), or reducing elective surgery and outpatient clinics by about 20% in some hospitals.

Isn’t it astonishing? The election was held 10 months ago. In terms of issues, it was dominated by healthcare almost from start to finish.

YOU can search the media coverage of the general election from start to finish, and you won’t find a single reference to the fact that once the election is out of the way, the real intention is to start squeezing as hard as possible on the HSE’s budget.

Now will you find it in the other place you might expect to see a change in direction like this, the Minister for Finance’s Budget speech. I went back and re-read that the other night, looking for some indication of the cutbacks ahead.

Instead I found the minister setting out his personal priorities for this year, including as priority number one “to protect the weaker in society through maintaining a high level of social spending”.

Under the heading of “Health”, Brian Cowen had this to say: “Much of the public debate about health services is focused on the increased cost involved. While there are valid concerns about the growth of health spending, both nationally and internationally, the proper context for this debate is one which views health spending as delivering benefits as well as accruing costs.”

Somewhere in that couple of sentences, there must be a code. If we could all figure it out, we’d have a better idea of when to look out for the cutbacks. At almost the precise moment that the Minister for Finance was talking about “valid concerns”, the Secretary General of the Department of Health was telling the HSE its budget was going to be squeezed. You can be absolutely certain that now we are once again in an era when cutbacks are to be the order of the day, it will be people who are elderly, disabled, ill, or otherwise vulnerable who will suffer most. That’s another reason they don’t like talking about them. And another reason you need to be updated regularly.