Rip Off Republic - TV show has embarrassed Government
By turning the spotlight on the scandal of over-charging in Ireland, Hobbs has revealed the inadequacy of Tánaiste and PD leader Mary Harney’s glib advice to consumers, telling them to shop around for better value.
Illustrating this point, the cost of private health insurance for Irish consumers has rocketed by 63% in the past seven years. This includes next Thursday’s 12.5% hike in VHI prices, sanctioned by Health Minister Harney, plus an annual 6% increase by BUPA Ireland.
But despite spiralling VHI charges, the Minister has stubbornly refused to introduce risk equalisation, a device which, according to the country’s biggest insurer, would spread the cost of covering its ageing customers and prevent it going bankrupt.
The protestations of Mr O’Malley, who intends complaining to the RTÉ Authority, indicate Mr Hobbs is succeeding where the Opposition parties have largely failed, although Fine Gael’s website ripoff.ie has kept the over-charging controversy bubbling.
Because the Hobbs exposé has captured the public imagination, Mr O’Malley has portrayed his withering criticism as biased and directed exclusively against the Fianna Fáil-PD coalition.
But in fact the revelations apply with equal force to successive governments which have failed to tackle the vexed question of over-pricing. Admittedly, the present administration is seen as the main culprit.
It is hard to escape the widely-held perception of the Coalition as a player in a cynical game of highway robbery going on in shops, pubs, restaurants, hospitals, banks, third-level colleges and in supermarkets up and down the country.
In this context, the Hobbs call on viewers to send nappies to the office of Enterprise Minister Micheál Martin was a clever way of highlighting public opposition to the Groceries Order. Since 1987 it has helped maintain food prices at an artificially high level.
Yet, instead of heeding consumer demands for this device to be scrapped, the Government has placated business interests by keeping the Order on the Statute books, a policy now being reviewed at last.
Striking a cord with the public, Rip Off Republic has brought the high-priced Irish shopping basket into the nation’s living room with dramatic effect. Not surprisingly, consumers are weary of what they see as the Coalition’s inaction in face of a growing mountain of evidence that Irish people are being ripped off.
The popular appeal of the RTÉ show is down to the economist’s facility to turn gobbledegook into intelligible English that viewers readily understand.
Presenting complex concepts in plain language, Mr Hobbs is airing an ongoing rip-off which not only affects everybody in the country but is also turning tourists off Ireland.
By larding his advice with down-to-earth examples of Ireland’s high cost economy, the financial guru has succeeded in turning a potentially dry topic into a political bombshell that now commands top viewing figures.
The embattled PDs are unlikely to convince a highly sceptical public that because of its political tenor, the show is unfairly biased against the Government.
Undoubtedly, it has created a strong impression that this Government has presided over Ireland’s rip-off culture. But instead of shooting the messenger, the Coalition should examine that complaint through an independent consumer survey.
By harnessing people-power, the Hobbs programme has certainly embarrassed the Government. Make no mistake, this is the very stuff of politics.
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