Irish Examiner view: No-consequence culture well established
Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis. The band will perform in Croke Park next August. Picture: Zak Hussein/PA Wire
This week we saw the return of one of the most predictable phenomena in modern Irish life, the sudden hike in Dublin hotel prices coinciding with news of a major event in the capital.
The confirmation of Oasis’s concerts next year in Croke Park had barely been digested when the price of rooms for the dates in question spiked sharply: Minutes after the announcement rooms had sold out, though some hotels were still offering availability — at more than €500 for one night.
To say there has been a negative reaction to the price rise is an understatement.
Even Taoiseach Simon Harris chipped in, saying such price rises were unhelpful: "It ends up giving our city and our country a bad reputation.
"It is much more in the interest, I believe, of hoteliers and others to act responsibly in relation to this.”
However, in reality there appears to be no remedy.
Similar price rises occurred when Taylor Swift played the Aviva earlier this year and led to similar complaints; now we have an identical situation and more complaints, and the Taoiseach is reduced to appealing to the better instincts of hotel owners and operators who are clearly gouging customers.
How did such a lack of consequences become such a commonplace in Irish life, particularly when it comes to the provision and delivery of services?
Irish hotels face no repercussions for their actions here other than the mild disapproval of the Taoiseach, but consequences are also unknown in other sectors.
Take the contract for work on rail lines in east Cork, which was awarded to Bam Ireland this week.
Earlier this summer, Bam Ireland was sharply criticised in the Dáil by Tánaiste Micheál Martin for its performance in building the National Children’s Hospital.
In Cork, it is associated with the development, or lack thereof, of the Cork Event Centre and a Sullivan’s Quay site that remains idle 15 years after planning was first granted for a hotel and offices.
Yet those overruns and delays have done nothing to stop Bam securing contracts for large-scale projects. Is it a lack of alternatives?
The no-consequence culture is clearly well established.
Last weekend, a high-profile US college football game was played in the Aviva Stadium in Dublin, with Georgia Tech beating Florida State in front of more than 47,000 spectators.
Ancient cliches had a winning day: Two of the ESPN commentators drank pints of Guinness in the broadcast booth in the Aviva simply because the game was played in Ireland.
A very different reality about alcohol emerged in recent days, with the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland stating that almost 2,000 pubs in the country have closed since 2005.
The counties that saw the biggest proportional declines in pub numbers were Limerick with 32%, along with Cork and Laois (both losing 29.9% of their pubs).
The reasons for that decline are various. The pandemic took a toll on businesses in many parts of Ireland and may have pushed more people to drink at home.
Rural depopulation has been punishing for a range of retail outlets in swathes of the country, pubs included.
Rising costs have been a long-running issue in the hospitality industry, with many small operators struggling even to find staff in a country experiencing a serious crisis in affordable accommodation.
Has there also been a concomitant change in the culture of drinking in Ireland, with the pub losing its central role in our social life to the coffee shop?
It would certainly be interesting to compare the ongoing decline in the number of pubs with the explosion in popularity of coffee shops and associated outlets.
Even at the height of the pandemic, lockdown coffee seemed to be available from converted horse boxes on every main road in Ireland, and every town and village now offers variety in caffeine to the discerning coffee drinker.
For those lazy hacks seizing upon jaded stereotypes about Ireland last weekend, a couple of coffees might have been a more representative tipple.
The findings of a confidential review of how TDs and senators claim expenses provide a sobering read, as well as a startling realisation.
The review was prepared after media coverage of alleged abuses of the system for payment of travel and accommodation allowances to politicians.
The system was not checked, requiring only that members of the Oireachtas clocked in using an electronic ‘fob’ system, with no obligation to clock out on the same day.
The review came up with different options for an improved system, ranging from TDs and senators signing in to confirm attendance in front of Oireachtas officials to a monitored clock-in process, as well as a system using biometric or facial scanners.
The option eventually selected by the Oireachtas involved clock-in stations overlooked by CCTV.
The Department of Public Expenditure had not released this review on the grounds that it formed part of an ongoing deliberative process, but it has now done so as it has accepted the matter was no longer under active consideration.
Adopting a new approach is a welcome move, particularly as it is likely to be more rigorous than the old system.
However, neither system disproves a startling conclusion: The very existence of the review suggests our TDs and senators cannot be trusted with claiming expenses appropriately.
A harsh view of our public representatives, perhaps, but given the review’s author consulted 32 other parliaments and found none used a system like Ireland’s, it seems unavoidable.
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