We need less consulting, more decisions please

Opinion: If you have ever wondered where your taxes go, the answer is to be found on a website called www.etenders.gov.ie, writes John McManus.

As the name suggests, it is where the Government puts tenders for goods and services. It covers everything from toilet paper for the Taoiseach's office to new tanks for the Army.

By far the most interesting section is business and consulting services.

As of last Friday there are currently 25 tenders under this heading, including one from the Gender Equality Unit that was established under the National Development Plan to make sure that the fruits of the plan were evenly spread across the sexes.

The GEU is looking for someone to undertake an Attitudinal Survey of the Role of Women on the Farm.

The purpose of this research is to "gain a better understanding of the overall role of women on the farm, to determine whether women are viewed as equals with men on the farm and how the contribution of women in the activities of the farm are valued, both by themselves and the other persons who live and/or work on the farm".

The specific objectives of this survey include:

1. An examination of the attitudes of women who live and/or work on the farm to their role on the farm.

2. An examination of the attitudes of others who live and/or work on the farm to the role of women on the farm.

3. Gain an understanding of the attitudes to the role of women on the farm.

4. Enhance the level of awareness and visibility of the role of women on the farm, through a published report.

A phone call to the GEU elicits the following explanation for this apparently pointless waste of taxpayers' money.

A few years ago a study by the Department of Agriculture found that we didn't really have any hard and fast information about women on farms and the GEU study sets out to remedy that.

As the unit points out, policy should be made on the basis of fact and not anecdote. Further questioning reveals that there is not any particular policy or policy initiative to which this survey relates, but some might flow as a result of the study.

At this point, might I suggest that anyone who thinks I am making this up, should check out the website.

If you do, then I suspect you will also form the impression that we live under an administration that will not undertake even the most minor of policy initiatives without first hiring consultants.

In the case of the GEU survey it is all rather funny, but there is a very serious problem.

Take the Competition Authority, which has just published a consultation paper as part of its four-stage investigation into the banking industry. The paper is 23 pages long and as it suggests it contains a list of questions that it wants to ask the banks.

It has taken it just over a year to come up with the questions and narrow down the areas where it thinks there might be problems.

But that is not to say that the authority has been idle. In the meantime it was busy commissioning consultants to conduct a background analysis of "the Irish banking sector and competition issues that arise in banking sector more generally".

The resulting report, by the London-based LECG group, was released last week and is a pretty dull read. It is more like an MBA dissertation on competition in banking rather than any sort of dissection of the Irish industry.

The authority now plans to proceed with stage three and four of its study.

Stage three is a "full competitive assessment of the markets chosen for further study". Stage four is the drafting of conclusions and recommendations to Government, industry participants and other relevant parties. LECG will be involved in all four stages and will be paid €162,000 for its trouble

This could take up to another year and is in reality a fantastic waste of taxpayers' money. The reason being that we already know what is wrong with the banking sector and what should be done to fix it.

Small business has been telling us for years what it knows to be the problem. The joke is that nobody takes it seriously until it produces a report written by independent consultants as it did last week.

The Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs knows what needs to be done. The director, Carmel Foley, hears it every day of the week from irate bank customers. She set out her views in her submission to the Competition Authority which was released two weeks ago.

Even Davy Stockbrokers know what needs to be done. In February two of its analysts, Scott Rankin and Emer Lang, produced an excellent report on competition issues in Irish banking. In a very carefully worded report they identified the areas were the main problems lie - current account banking and small business banking - as well as fingering the control of the money transfer system by the large banks as the key to unlocking the puzzle.

I don't know how much time Mr Rankin and Ms Lang spent on their report, but I doubt it was two years.

At this stage, we no more need a two-year study by consultants to tell us what needs to be done in the banking industry, than we need a survey to find out what women living on the farms think. What we need are some politicians who are not scared of the banks and prepared to take a few decisions.