MINISTER FOR Finance Brian Lenihan has consistently argued that no group can be exempted from a critical examination of public service staffing and expenditure, including social welfare recipients, following publication of the McCarthy report. From his perspective, that is a sensible approach. Any other response would encourage vested interests to redouble their efforts to be excluded. Special pleading has been elevated to an art form in recent days.
The good thing about the McCarthy report is that every constituency – as big as social welfare recipients, as small as the Law Reform Commission – has been advancing their case for special consideration in recent days. This process will increase in these summer weeks.
Pressure has been building on Government to cut the minimum wage. Much has been made of the fact that we have the second highest minimum wage in Europe. But we also live in the second most unequal society in the developed world, according to the UN. It follows that a high minimum wage does not ensure a sharing of wealth, although it can contribute to social protection. The head of Ictu, David Begg, saw it as a “toxic measure” which the trade unions would not stand for last night. Mr Lenihan’s claim that change to the minimum wage will only be contemplated if it can be shown to impede job creation seems balanced and reasonable, particularly when local authority and utility charges are of greater importance to small businesses.
A letter to this newspaper from a hospital consultant noted that while he and his colleagues had received pay increases of €25,000 from the Government, last May, cutbacks were being implemented in hospital and public health services. This is obviously wrong. And while the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mary Coughlan talks about challenging vested interests and bringing down fees and charges in the protected sector of the economy, little is being done.
Now that the economic shocks have occurred, the Tánaiste is appealing to engineers, architects, the legal profession and dentists to reduce their fees and end their anti-competitive practices. In that context, yet another report will be brought to Government on the failure to implement reforms recommended by the Competition Authority. The Government should get on with it.
Ms Coughlan and other Ministers have also commissioned a series of reports designed to evaluate the impact of the McCarthy recommendations on employment, services and the productive sector of the economy. It represents a classic blocking move by senior officials whose empire-building has come under threat. Within the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, some 14 agencies with more than 4,000 staff are engaged in the promotion, support and marketing functions for indigenous industry.
It is important, at this early stage in the consideration of the McCarthy report’s recommendations, that waste and duplication in the most protected sectors of government are addressed before savings are sought at the expense of the most vulnerable. Changes in social welfare must be a policy of last resort.