Policy debate in Ireland involves whipping up emotions rather than cogent debate. As a result, we are in a mess
DIAGNOSIS IS derived from a Greek word meaning “to learn”. It can be defined as the investigation or analysis of the cause or nature of a situation. By being able to define what the problem is, we can better understand how to prevent it.
Diagnosing Ireland’s problems has become very fashionable of late.
Last week, the European Commission identified Ireland, along with Greece, Latvia, Spain and the UK, at particular risk over the failure to tackle rising debt levels. Although the December budget will impose €4 billion in savings, Ireland will still have to borrow four times the limit set by the EU’s Stability and Growth Pact. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said Ireland is facing the biggest contraction of any advanced economy.
The Department of Finance has predicted unemployment will reach almost 14 per cent next year. Nearly one-quarter of those on the Live Register are under 25, symptomatic of a future legacy of long-term unemployment. Last week’s RTÉ1 television’s Prime Time special on emigration suggested we would soon have emigration levels like the 1980s.
Angel Gurría, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) secretary general, was in Ireland earlier this month to present the OECD Economic Survey of Ireland. The report was littered with phrases like "protracted period of adjustment" and "significant weaknesses in management of waste".
Indeed, even middle-aged angry men with books to sell have joined the diagnosing ranks.
These are positive interventions to Irish public debate which has traditionally qualified itself as the ability to express emotion. The Irish version of intellectual public discourse is one which has always allowed itself to be polarised into black or white positions.
Since independence, much of our public life has been defined by opposing views to nationalism and competing liberal and conservative outlooks on the role of the church. We have cast these aside and replaced them with new ways to divide ourselves.
There’s the camp that believes the gap between spending and revenue must be reduced despite the devastating costs to society. There are those who believe the existing services and conditions must be maintained even at the risk of International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervention.
The public versus private chestnut gets uglier as the media confrontations become more regular, as Pat Kenny discovered in last week's RTÉ1 television's The Frontline.
The diagnosis prescribed has largely been an economic one. For instance, the National Economic and Social Council, a body comprising the social partners and tasked to analyse and report to the Taoiseach on strategic issues relating to the economy, has identified in a series of recent reports what it believes to be the five dimensions to Ireland’s crisis: a credit and banking crisis, a fiscal crisis, an economic crisis of competitiveness and job losses, a social crisis of unemployment and income loss, and a reputational crisis.
But no mention by the social partners of the failures of our political institutions or political culture. The diagnosis remains contested.
Is it the fault of our electoral system which inhibits meaningful ideological debate and fortifies the catch-all character of Irish politics? Or the absence of a robust parliamentary system which demands accountability and transparency? Or a political culture bankrupt of any obligation to learn from past mistakes because the mindset of the past remains that of the present?
“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power,” George Bernard Shaw once said. This is why Irish citizens need to take ownership of how decisions are made.
The depths of our financial crisis, as identified by the EU, the OECD, the IMF and others, were not only due to an international banking crisis and the global recession but the collapse of the housing bubble which was exacerbated by particular political decisions.
For example, decisions to reduce capital gains tax on investment property and property-based tax incentives such as reliefs on hotels are why the hotel sector is now regarded as insolvent.
Peter Bacon’s report for the Irish Hotels Federation claims there is an oversupply of 15,000 rooms nationally.
The financial cost of pre-election political decisions to offer unsustainable universal services such as medical cards for the over 70s, SSIAs, early childcare supplements and free university fees now have to be clawed back in December’s budget.
Serious questions regarding how public policy priorities and decision-making processes are implemented in education, planning and local government were highlighted in my recent column on Gaelscoil An Ghoirt Álainn in Cork. Indeed, the Department of Education has no national inventory of schools. And the list goes on.
The recent OECD report was blunt in its assessment of Civil Service and political decision-making capability and stressed the “importance of policy settings that promote sustainable long-run growth”.
That’s why we need to embrace evidence-based policymaking which allows for a systematic early consideration of the benefits, costs and compliance issues of new legislation. Effective public sector reform would open up decision-making to interested stakeholders and the wider public rather than our traditional Civil Service-led policy approach.
That’s what a regulatory impact analysis (RIA) is for: to deter the crisis-led approach or kite-flying that has characterised for too long how we do decision-making. Enough.