Budget debate at least proves the politicians call the tune

Greetings from the meat-grinder economy of Ireland. Worse than Chaplin in Modern Times, my life is spent being slowly minced, on and off, at the flick of a switch by the Minister for Finance. He presses "Go", and against all my moral convictions, I collude with him to get my wife and my offspring into the mincer. He presses "Stop" and I get an allowance to spend on my children. He alternates between "society" and "economy" from budget to budget and I feel relief or pain in turn. I respond to each and every stimulus from him, my moral autonomy a cruel illusion. I decide what to do by reference to how the great Minister treats others. If my neighbour gets a tax break, I feel compelled to imitate the neighbour just to get the same break.

The spectre of the minister for finance - whoever holds the office - wielding such control as to be capable of massive social engineering at a whim is what many would clearly want us to believe. Instead of having moral autonomy, we are Pavlovian dogs of tax policy. Even those who urge the creation of "a society not an economy" base their arguments on an assumption that people respond primarily to economic stimuli, for good or for ill. This "society-economy" dichotomy is only a metaphor anyway. It does not lead to any particular policy decision. You simply declare , "this is a policy for creating a society" and you're right. It is a mere rhetorical device.

And what rhetoric! Impassioned debate is fine, but sheer bad manners and yelling as displayed, for instance, on Questions & Answers is not. When the radio phone lines are jammed, how many people at work take the time to call 1850 whatever? You don't hear so many beneficiaries of change, some not-so-rich, calling to express downright, calm satisfaction.

The alternative to the meat grinder we are presented with is the organic, consensual, eco-system of social partnership. The best thing Mr McCreevy said all week was that the electorate had mandated certain tax policies.

Mr Bruton's best point was that there was no mandate for the individualisation of tax bands (true if it is an end, rather than a means to an end). At least they both see the primal importance of electoral mandates. There is still life in our electoral democracy.

But one of the pillars of social partnership, the now-ubiquitous Fr Sean Healy of the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI), was commending to us "the vision of the National Economic and Social Council" as an alternative to Mr McCreevy's horrific Budget. No-one voted for the NESC document, written by a small committee of civil servants, employers and unions. Almost no-one has read it or heard of it, I'd say. No-one voted for CORI either. There is no good reason why the fine people of CORI should be at the social partnership table, rather than Gerard Casey's Christian Solidarity Party, for example. At least some people voted for them. Why not Archbishop Connell, indeed, and the Chief Rabbi? CORI represents some religious, although I don't know if its policies are democratically voted upon by all members. It certainly cannot represent the one and only truly Christian view of budgetary policy, because there is no such unique view. I am sure Fr Healy, an honourable man, would never claim to do so. Neither I, nor women working in the home, are represented by any group at the social partnership table, not by IBEC, not by ICTU, nor by CORI, the INOU or the IFA. Maybe by the Government, you say. But that's not good enough. The Government is not just another social partner.

The elected representatives are fundamental to democracy, in a way that none of the other social partners are. We will still have to resolve economic and social choices by elections if no partnership deal is agreed, as we did for 65 years before the first agreement.

Nearly everyone says there should be another social partnership deal, but not at any price. Usually that "unacceptable" price is set in terms of pay or tax. A more important price would be the emasculation of a truly representative democracy. Social partnership must not become a national stitch-up. Garett FitzGerald sounded a warning about this a number of weeks ago, but judging by the scarce mention of similar views, you'd swear he was a crank way outside official Ireland.

The debate about the Budget has been very revealing. Sometimes I felt like borrowing the music critic's famous bucket. If one good thing comes of it, it will be that calling the TD, backbench or independent, is what really matters, not what the pillars of social partnership say.

Oliver O'Connor is editor of the monthly publication, Finance. E-mail: ooconnor@indigo.ie