Is Big Phil the man to sell austerity?

‘Telling it simply, just how it is’

Rigid argument, says Conor Ryan

IN terms of green jersey team talks Brian Lenihan’s budget speech in Dec 2009 was a caricature in craw-thumping.

“Our plan is working. We have turned the corner,” he said.

Twelve months later he was flying to Brussels to sign away our economic independence to the EU/IMF.

That day in 2009, Mr Lenihan wanted €4bn worth of budget cuts and to make us feel good about it.

This delusional rally to the cause call, from which Mr Lenihan later tried to distance himself, did nothing to help.

There was no turn. There was no corner. There were no green shoots or hope-filled horizons.

Crucially, the public did not buy it. We know that because consumer spending remained paralysed and the amount people saved for security increased.

Worse, the international markets did not buy it. We know that because the measures he announced did nothing to explain away the hole in the banks’ balance sheets.

If you cannot pay for it and you cannot borrow for it, then you cannot buy it. You can turn all the corners you want, but if you start from this place you will end up back there.

Instead, you need people to believe in what you are doing and the best method is to show them that the books can balance.

On the night he led Fine Gael to election victory, Enda Kenny espoused a philosophy. “The incoming government is not going to leave our people in the dark… Paddy likes to know what the story is,” he said.

People can legitimately complain about a lot this Government has done and not done, but that strategy, whatever about the lingo, has to be respected.

Paddy is not stupid. And Paddy understands. Because many, many are in the same struggle to make ends meet that the country is in.

The Government obviously adhered to this when it tasked the bruising Phil Hogan with delivering the household charge.

It could have used the resignation of Willie Penrose last year as an opportunity to appoint a PR-savvy housing minister whose primary task would have been to sell the €100 levy.

The previous government effectively did this when it designated a junior minister to sit on and explain the Lisbon Treaty.

But, instead, Mr Hogan kept ownership of it and tried to sell the message, or at least deliver the message, to reluctant buyers.

He has been uncompromising. He has needlessly risen to every scrap of opposition bait. He wrongly assumed that everybody who did not pay would be unwilling, rather than unsure.

This all meant that until Tuesday night’s calm-down interview, he was scaring those who simply wanted assurances.

Moreover, Mr Hogan’s rationale for not extending the deadline, to allow breathing space for those confused about how to pay, was inexplicable.

But he has not shirked and sugar-coated the message.

The State needs money and the charge is one of the agreed ways of getting it. The charge is unfair, he said, because it hits every house equally. And it is imperfect. Yet that should not blind to the bigger issue.

Local authorities were high on the hog for years with development contributions, planning permission fees, and commercial rates.

It meant excessive construction-subsidised local services. The Mahon Tribunal captured the worst of where that got us.

However, a justifiable criticism of the Government is that it is trying to have it both ways. It is selling our potential to the Chinese on the same week it is trying to convince citizens it cannot fund councils.

‘Efforts to bully public backfired’

He didn’t listen, says Claire O’Sullivan

SELLING further austerity to a country that is already suffering from acute austerity fatigue is no easy task.

When this latest round of austerity is manifesting in the form of a property tax which demands an equal sum from pensioners, those in negative equity, the unemployed, and the wealthy, you have a mighty problem on your hands.

And when this latest batch of austerity is seen by many as being reminiscent of a tithe, of being another attempt to cull from the poor to keep the rich (aka bankers) in comfort, you are wading into cultural, political and economic quicksand unless you arm yourself for battle.

Big Phil Hogan and the wider Government have lost significant political currency because of their utter lack of preparedness when it came to the household charge.

Scoff you may at Fianna Fáil in this post-2010 election and post-Mahon era, but Bertie Ahern would never have presided over such a mess. His political antennae would have been screeching and the Government, in all its hues, would have been on strict orders to stay on message.

In contrast, Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore, and Environment Minister Phil Hogan didn’t ever seem to have had a clear message to sell: Why this charge must be paid, where this money is going, how the charge can be paid, and by when.

Instead, week by week as the confusion, anger, and resentment grew, the charge became an ever more potent stick with which to beat an astonished Mr Hogan and his cabinet colleagues.

Four years in to a recession cycle that has robbed people’s jobs, their homes and their hopes for the future, it was downright stupid not to have had the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the whole Cabinet using every opportunity to drive home this message.

To try and use fear as the tool to beat the native was naive, as the Irish are now post-fear. We’re too far into this economic collapse to be frightened.

Never in my life have I ever heard so many tax-paying people say they will go to jail for this one as (a) they paid €30,000-€40,000 in stamp duty during the boom, (b) are drowning in negative equity, and (c) just can’t afford the charge as they can’t pay their ESB bills never mind another tax.

Phil and the Cabinet didn’t listen, though.

Instead, they tried to sell something by talking down to the country, displaying a frightening absence of political intelligence and, more dangerously, an arrogance and communications’ failure redolent of the Cowen government.

In recent weeks, a succession of Labour TDs also openly articulated the concerns of their constituents.

To have allowed so many TDs go off message was abysmal public relations discipline.

Furthermore, Mr Hogan et al were also responsible for another raft of self-imposed fiascos, including not including post offices in the payment options.

From the outset of this campaign, we didn’t know if the household charge was a property charge, a water charge or both.

Down to the last week when Phil Hogan resorted to hectoring and bullying, the household campaign has been muddled, incoherent and nothing short of disastrous.

Whether it has fatally damaged Hogan’s ministerial career remains to be seen.

It has certainly accelerated people’s feelings of discontent and for that, the Government will continue to pay.