The ironic loss of our economic sovereignty

The troika has decided we can’t hold power to account, and they are right, says Gerard Howlin.

THE peculiar thing about Irish politics is that we can change jockeys but not horses. Our outrage about the loss of economic sovereignty is undermined by the irony of it.

The continuing carelessness with which our sovereignty is administered shows how little regard there is for it. It was surely a stunning rebuke of the administration that the troika demanded in its most recent review that: “To prevent renewed health spending overruns, the implementation of measures in this sector will be monitored on a monthly basis by a high-level cabinet committee”.

The response was a predictable public squall about Health Minister James Reilly, and the hopes of his delivering within his budget in 2013, given his failings in 2012.

It is now the clear opinion of the troika that our systems of financial oversight are unfit for purpose.

Article 6 of the Constitution states: “All powers of government, legislative, executive and judicial, derive, under God, from the people.”

In effect much of that sovereign power is constitutionally delegated to our elected legislature. If we are sovereign, it must follow that we can hold power to account. The troika has decided we can’t and they are right.

In 2012, the Oireachtas policy committees responsible for the three largest areas of spending — social protection, health, and education — did not scrutinise the estimates for the departments they are charged with overseeing until May 22, May 17, and Apr 24 respectively. Understandably, international bodies were not prepared in 2013 to throw money at a system where the fundamental check of the scrutiny of the legislature over the expenditure of government is so tardy as to be effectively non-existent.

It is a function of the relevant policy committees to examine the basis on which policies and budgets are costed, to ensure they are realistic and that they remain so. This function is distinct from the role of the Public Accounts Committee which together with the Comptroller and Auditor General, has a responsibility to audit expenditure.

This year, the Oireachtas committee on health and children met with the HSE, though not the minister, on Mar 7 to discuss its 2013 budget. The Oireachtas education committee met with minister Ruairi Quinn the day before. Social protection, the largest budget, has not been interrogated by the relevant committee so far this year. Transcripts of those meetings show that some policy issues were indeed trashed out. Regrettably, however, examination of the robustness of the underlying budgetary arithmetic was paltry. There are no technical or accounting resources worthy of the name available to parliamentary committees to probe either ministers or officials effectively.

Our pawned sovereignty is a system that elects a parliament and chooses a government. That parliament almost completely lacks the capacity to hold the government to account in a meaningful way. Ministers in Irish law are a “corporation sole” which is a concept of power derived from the theology of medieval kingship when the king’s power was inalienable from his person.

In 2013, there is no effective separation from and delegation of a minister’s power from his or her person to their officials. The reason nobody is ever held responsible, is because nobody is.

If the committee’s interrogation of budgets for 2013 is disappointing the process last autumn of their engagement with ministers in advance of the budgetary process was derisory. That engagement was hailed as a significant reform that would make a difference. It wasn’t and it hasn’t.

Voters threw out one government, punished it mercilessly, and installed another with an unprecedented majority. As we increase the capacity of government to raise new taxes, we completely neglect to strengthen supervision over how they are spent.

The real issue as the Dáil returns next week is not when we will have a water charge; it is how the money can be accounted for. Punch and Judy politics is the distraction preventing us seeing what the real crisis is. That crisis is the wasted opportunity to reform our broken systems.

Like mutating creatures in a horror film, our systems show alarming signs of coming through intact. If this Government can fairly say it inherited them; increasingly they can be accused of protecting them. Power has wilted their ardour for the political kill.

All going well, the troika will be on its way before year end. Sovereignty will be restored and we will be in charge of our own affairs again.

The irony of it all.

* Gerard Howlin was a government adviser from 1997 to 2007.