THE ECONOMIST behind the Government’s plan to reform the public service, Colm McCarthy, has said the establishment of the so-called “An Bord Snip Nua” was “an absolute political exercise” aimed at softening up public opinion ahead of harsh cutbacks in public sector pay and services.
Mr McCarthy chaired the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes which last July identified more than €5 billion in savings.
Speaking to Scottish public sector figures, including the finance secretary, in Edinburgh on Friday, he said the Government set up the arms-length body to sell unpopular decisions to the people, unions, politicians and the media.
“The penny dropped around May 2008 in Ireland and the former taoiseach Mr Ahern went off to enjoy his retirement and the new Government of the same parties took over. There was a new finance minister and the period of denial ended and they started taking fiscal measures in July 2008,” he said. “There was then a budget in October 2008 which wasn’t well thought through. A lot of cuts; not pre-sold very well; some of them were rescinded.
“The week after there were all sorts of people jumping up and down and the Government rolled back on some of the cuts and it was not well managed politically.
“They then set up, pre-Christmas, a highly political exercise, which was ‘Bord Snip’. Absolutely political exercise from the word go – and nothing wrong with that – with the intention of preparing not just technocratic proposals but also public opinion for a better-crafted set of budgetary measures in the 2009 .”
The PR element of the body was just as important as the economic function, the economist said.“I get the impression that that element of the equation is very important. You can get public servants to dream up what the possible cuts are. Sometimes they’ll conceal the easiest ones if it doesn’t suit them and bureaucrats play games. But the business of getting a list of possible economy measures is the easiest bit.
“It’s getting public opinion and the Opposition parties and the broadsheet media on board and getting them to accept and understand that we’re not doing this for fun, that we’re in a hole and that the quicker we start dealing with it the better and that there has to be a fiscal consolidation, and all this kind of stuff.
“That’s really important and the mechanism they used in Ireland was designed to achieve that objective, as well as the objective of having a great big menu of cuts for the Government to choose from.”