The media will focus on changes in the new cabinet while ignoring the plight of society's most vulnerable groups, writes VINCENT BROWNE.
THE MEDIA will be overflowing today with discussion and speculation about the new Cabinet of Brian Cowen. Who will be the new tánaiste, the new minister for finance? Who is dropped, who is promoted? Aside from the impact on the persons concerned and perhaps their families, and a possible symbolic significance, it matters not one iota who is minister for whatever, who is tánaiste, who is dropped or who is promoted. Nothing will change.
Getting rid of Mary Harney as Minister for Health and Children and removing the Progressive Democrats from Government altogether would have symbolic significance and, of course, there would be some justice in that. The PDs have been a malign force in politics, certainly since Des O'Malley left the leadership of that party. They targeted almost every single vulnerable group in society - single mothers, Travellers, asylum seekers, notably asylum children, prisoners, the poor.
It was the precision with which they targeted these groups, more than the fact that they targeted these groups, that is the defining characteristic of the PDs. But that too is largely symbolic, for Fianna Fáil probably would have got around to doing that all on its own, if left to it, but maybe not with the menace.
Getting Mary Harney out of Health would also be an acknowledgement at least that the health service is in chaos and that the sustained strategy of building into the health system the two-tiered, co-location wheeze is disastrous, further copperfastening inequity into the system. But in truth, it wouldn't change anything now. The damage has been done. Fianna Fáil has absorbed the PD line. Nevertheless, getting rid of Mary Harney would be a public acknowledgement of urgency in rescuing the health service.
But even that is unlikely to happen and it is unlikely to happen because of an over-riding need to preserve the image of Fianna Fáil as the party of coalition. Were Brian Cowen to get rid of Mary Harney now, or were he to cause her to leave because of a hissy fit over being removed from Health, he would be perceived as less capable than Bertie Ahern was in managing coalition partners and that could do him and his party damage in future elections. Returning to office is the main game, which means jobs for the boys and girls is the main game for which parties are in office now. This means it is inconsequential as to which Ministers are in office.
All this is of zero consequence because the fixed common sense of politics now is that the poor have to pay for the impending economic crisis or economic difficulties. The only way to deal with the coming fiscal crisis (for example, the shortfall between taxation revenue and public spending) is to cut back on the big spending departments, ie Health and Children, Education and Science, and Social Welfare. It makes sense.
Clearly, the option of increasing income or capital gains taxes (ie making the rich pay for the ending of a boom that made so many of them massively rich) is not an option. It is common sense. Certainly, it makes no sense to increase public spending at a time of fiscal stringency, no sense to make any difference to a health service that victimised the poor, to an educational service that keeps the children of poor people in disadvantage, to make any difference to those in consistent poverty.
The Conference of Religious in Ireland (Cori) recently charged the Government and Brian Cowen specifically with failing to deliver on several major commitments in the social partnership programme, Towards 2016. It listed the following: failure to provide funding for 300 primary-care teams in Budget 2008; failure to provide adequate funding for the mental health strategy; failure to deliver the national carers strategy; failure to make progress on resourcing those who have not previously pursued a third-level qualification.
It noted it was significant that major commitments on social issues in areas such as primary healthcare teams and adult literacy have not been honoured.
It pointed out that 720,774 people (17 per cent of the population) have incomes less than the standard poverty line recognised by the European Commission and the United Nations, which in 2008 is equivalent to €11,400 for a single person and to €26,400 for a household of four. And, amid all the talk about cherishing equally all the children of the nation, more than 20 per cent of all children in Ireland are at risk of poverty.
Not a single thing will change about this, nor will the vast preponderance of the media commentary on the new Cabinet allude at all to this. Instead, there will be lots and lots of colour and human interest stuff about promotions and demotions, who is on the up and who is on the down, with no reference to those who are really on the down all the time.
It's common sense.