Ahern's malingering scorns public service ethos

OPINION:Like the worst public service skiver, he cites 'custom and practice' to justify his absence

ONCE, WHEN I was working in a factory, I was sent up to a store room to fetch some heavy items. I met a fellow worker on the steep stairs and I realised he was carrying the same box up and down. I asked him what he was doing and he winked. “If the foreman sees me, he’ll think I’m busy.”

There are people in every job who put more effort and energy into avoiding work than into doing it. Most of their colleagues seethe with resentment and quiet contempt. Few ever do anything about it. If we’re at all serious about public service reform, that attitude has to change.

It is, for example, simply indefensible that primary and secondary teachers are entitled to 31 and 30 days a year respectively of uncertified sick leave. Teachers themselves should be in the forefront of scrapping this practice. Its existence obscures the reality that very few teachers actually exploit this skivers’ charter: primary teachers on average take just one of their 31 uncertified sick days a year. But the lazy minority undermines the value of public service for the hard-working majority.

If he wants to cut out this codology, however, Brian Cowen could start with one obvious malingerer in his own crew, a public servant who is paid €100,000 a year plus, a very generous pension, plus equally generous expenses, plus a car and chauffeur. He even has a special office at his supposed workplace, which cost the taxpayer €220,000 to refurbish just last year. Yet he is patently not doing the job he is paid to perform.

Bertie Ahern was re-elected as the TD for Dublin Central just two years ago, and he hopes to hold down this job until a general election in 2012. On Sunday, he started another job, as a sports columnist with the News of the World newspaper.

He has toured to exotic destinations such as Korea, Ecuador and Honduras making paid speeches, handled by his agency, the Washington Speakers Bureau. He is a director of the Newry-based “internationally established private property development and investment company” Parker Green International, for whom he also travels on business.

All of this is fine – provided he is adequately performing his principal job as a TD, scrutinising and voting on legislation. The Dáil members’ database describes him as a “full-time public representative”.

This is, to put it mildly, a bit of a stretch. In May, the Irish Independent reported that he had attended just 28 of 127 Dáil votes in the year since he resigned as taoiseach.

Since then, so far as I can see, his record of turning up for work has actually become worse. The Dáil sat for 18 days during June and July. I can find only two of those days – June 10th and July 10th – when Ahern was present and voting. The first of those occasions was the Fine Gael vote of no confidence in the Government, when every deputy was obliged by the whips to attend. Ahern was in New York and was reportedly disgusted that he had to fly home at his own expense to do his day job. The second occasion, July 10th, was the last day of term. Ahern, having missed so many important votes, managed to be present for one on the crucial motion: “That the Dáil . . . shall adjourn until 2.30pm on Wednesday, 16 September, 2009.”

Brazenly, he seems to regard this absenteeism as his right. His spokeswoman told The Irish Independent that “it was ‘custom and practice’ that former taoisigh only had to attend ‘important’ votes and could miss the day-to-day ones”.

Among the issues in the last two months alone not deemed sufficiently important for Ahern to vote on were the extension of deposit guarantees of €440 billion to the banks, the Criminal Justice (Surveillance) Bill, urgent amendments to the Mental Health Act, the Housing Bill, dealing with the rights of tenants, the Institutional Child Abuse Bill and most of the stages of the Criminal Justice Bill.

None of these is, apparently, as important as, for example Manchester United’s prospects this season, a subject on which he has expressed his profound thoughts in the News of the World, sharing space with “I’m Jacko Girl’s Real Dad”; “Jade Goody’s Hubby in Eight-Hour Sex Orgy” and “Kerry to Have More Lipo to Keep Rat Husband”. Well, we couldn’t have an ex-taoiseach’s time wasted on trivialities or his dignity encroached upon by frivolities.

It seems clear that Bertie Ahern has no interest in dealing with legislation going through the Dáil and does not regard himself as being under any obligation to turn up for its “day-to-day” business. Like the worst public service skiver, he cites “custom and practice” to justify his unwillingness to the job he is paid to do. Why does he not resign? And how can we demand that the lazy and cynical minority in the public service shape up or ship out when Ahern’s colleagues seem unbothered by his evident unwillingness to do either?