OPINION:Why has it taken so long for the in-depth McCarthy report audit of how public money is spent? asks ELAINE BYRNE
FOUR THINGS emerge from the McCarthy report. One. Fianna Fáil is responsible for grossly mismanaging our public finances. The sharp increase in public spending during the Ahern years now means that 11 per cent of estimated tax revenues will be used this year alone to service our growing national debt. The Charlie McCreevy economic doctrine of “If I have it, I’ll spend it” rings rather hollow given that the projected exchequer deficit for 2009 is €20.3 billion.
Two. Fianna Fáil failed to govern efficiently or effectively. Or as Colm McCarthy told Mark Little on RTÉ’s Prime Time last week: “There seems to have been just a preference, every time there was a problem: set up a new outfit.” Difficult decision-making was delegated to extra-parliamentary organisations. Complex and controversial decisions were sidestepped, thus avoiding unnecessary confrontation. A policy of appeasement was adopted to placate vested interests. Instead, decision-making was farmed out to social partnership and a proliferation of State agencies.
Three. Why has it taken so long for such a comprehensive audit of how public money is spent? Did the media and the Opposition fail in their obligations to hold the Government to account? Why did it take the McCarthy report to shatter tightly held assumptions about how pupil-teacher ratios were calculated, for instance? Granted, McCarthy and his team were given unparalleled access to internal information by the departments. Yet, the six months spent compiling the report has possibly unearthed more detail and compelling argument than 10 years of media comment and parliamentary questions by the Opposition. Why?
What does this say about our freedom of information legislation, commitments to open government and accountability mechanisms such as the public accounts committee?
This is why we need to embrace evidence-based policy-making, such as Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA). Instead of a crisis-led and micro-interventionist approach to legislation, the RIA forces policy-makers to openly and calmly consider their long-term implications. It opens up decision-making to interested stakeholders and the wider public, rather than our traditional Civil Service-led policy approach.
Four. This 308-page indictment of political failure has established the default lines on which politics will be fought in the years to come. We are now a nation divided between old and new, red and blue, urban and rural, public and private. In the absence of identifiable political leadership, the long-term implications of the report will be fragmentation.
The bluntness of the McCarthy report has shown why there is a divide between the private and public sectors. For example, on top of a basic salary and high overtime bill, gardaí are entitled to a mere 57 allowances, which McCarthy charitably describes as “liberal” and “not in the public interest”.
Indeed, at a cost of €2.25 billion, (excluding the €1 billion in accrued pension costs), the public service has increased by an incredible 45,000 persons since 2001.
Battle lines for urban-rural confrontation have been drawn. In that classic Irish tradition of marking the man and not the ball, Irish Farmers Association president Pádraig Walshe told protesters in Cavan on Sunday that the report was written by “Dublin 4” economists who do not know how the rural economy works. Yet, the import of the McCarthy report suggests rural Ireland has been in receipt of disproportionate privilege from the exchequer.
The report says the Government should: amalgamate small rural primary schools, cease funding for the Rural Transport Scheme, terminate the Suckler Cow Scheme, close the Rural Environmental Protection Four Scheme (Reps), suspend the Western Development Commission, reduce the allocation for local and community development programmes, possibly privatise Bord na Móna, and rationalise Teagasc offices. Oh, and abolish the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
The report did not mince its words. Rural Ireland will perceive itself to be under attack, with proposals beginning with verbs such as amalgamate, cease, discontinue, terminate, abolish and close. This is where implementation of the McCarthy report will face its biggest challenge.
The local elections have established that Fianna Fáil is now primarily a rural political party. In Dublin, the party is fourth, behind Labour, Fine Gael and Independents. In Limerick City Council and Waterford City Council, Fianna Fáil has just one representative each.
The capacity for Fianna Fáil to tackle vested farming interests is akin to Labour rejecting trade union concerns. Which is why Labour’s suggestion for the establishment of a minister for public reform is promising.
The tone of the report has demonstrated a fondness for terms such as rationalisation and amalgamation, which amount to a greater centralisation of government functions. A minister for public reform would demonstrate political teeth to implement the proposals, and guard against a closed Civil Service becoming all-powerful.
Ireland is divided. A new generation pays for the mistakes of a previous generation. Urban constituencies are largely dominated by the ideological left. Rural and urban Ireland compete with each other for scarce resources. The social partnership process dies a slow death. The fault lines between the public and private sectors grow.
“Ireland is the sow that eats her own farrow,” James Joyce once said.
We are our own worst enemy.