There is an absolute imperative for Brian Cowen to initiate a turning point from his unlucky first 100 days
THE STATUE of Edmund Burke strikes a handsome pose on the front lawn of Trinity College as he confidently looks toward the former Irish parliament, now the Bank of Ireland, on College Green.
“Parliament,” Burke stated, “is a deliberative assembly of one nation with one interest – that of the whole: where, not the local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.” The title of Burke’s 1774 speech was The Duties of a Politician.
This concept of a national parliament focusing on national issues never quite caught on in Ireland. Instead we have a system wholly out of kilter.
Local politicians are local administrators, national politicians are local politicians and government representatives juggle the duties of national office and local responsibilities.
Our 166 Dáil deputies act as provincial ombudsmen or intercessors between government departments and their constituents.
The Taoiseach’s state of the nation address will hopefully clarify the actual extent of the economic downturn and its implications for Government spending. It has been suggested that the Taoiseach may make this address around the time of Fianna Fáil’s two-day parliamentary party “think-in” in Galway, which begins on September 15th.
The Taoiseach will make his address as the Irish head of government and not as the leader of Fianna Fáil. The only place to make this national address is in the national parliament.
If the Taoiseach genuinely believes in the primacy of elected politicians and the reassertion of the power of parliament, he should buck the trend of government by media and not contribute to the perception of a redundant and irrelevant Dáil.
A state of the nation address is not a blunt instrument to be wielded gratuitously. The last such address on the economy by a taoiseach was almost 30 years ago. (And boy, do we still remember that one!)
Rejection of the Lisbon referendum has contributed to a loss of confidence in Brian Cowen’s leadership. There is an absolute imperative for him to get this right and to initiate a turning point from his unlucky first 100 days in office.
Ireland, and the type of politics she tolerates, has changed since the last such state of the nation address.
Following his election as Taoiseach, Brian Cowen told the Dáil: “The character of the generations that will build this century is still being formed. It is these generations that will decide the shape of the future.”
More than two-thirds of Ireland’s population are younger than the Taoiseach. Their standard of education, level of income, foreign experience and expectations are very different to that in 1984 when he first entered politics. The people of Ireland are intellectually more independent and socially more autonomous than their ancestors.
The character of authority is also different. In the last 10 years, the authority of our institutions has been challenged and the integrity and capability of public influence has been undermined. The Church, the Garda, financial sector, hospitals, public service, professions, businesses and politics have endured a painful process of public scrutiny.
We must not scapegoat weakened traditional values and the onslaught of modernisation as reasons why a loss of trust in Irish public life has occurred. Our values are not in decline, but in a process of clarification.
A more critical and less easily led public now participate politically in different and innovative ways. Loyalty to political parties has diminished since the 1980s and the proportion of swing voters is now higher.
The dynamics of politics have been transformed and now demand real reform as to how our political system operates.
The expenses system for local and national politicians contributes to a perception of unorthodox compensation. One in five members of the Oireachtas employs a close relative. Three extra junior ministerial posts and six new Oireachtas committees have been established by this Government. The notion of “jobs for the boys” at the expense of the taxpayer lessens credibility among the public.
A consequence of how politics has not worked is the television images of evacuations from flood-prone housing developments. Indeed a county councillor candidly acknowledged on RTÉ 1 television’s Prime Time Investigates programme that rezoning decisions in the Ballybay flood plains and the tiny village of Connons in Monaghan were due to a planning logic whereby: “If there’s not a hill on it . . . if it’s suitable for sewage, then it’s suitable for development.
The message from the Government’s two-year €1.44 billion cutbacks is that it was somehow okay during the boom to extravagantly spend taxes on measures now considered wasteful or unnecessary.
Deaglán de Bréadún, political correspondent of The Irish Times, outlined on Wednesday on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland various savings instructed by the Department of Finance.
“Rationalisation” measures include buying airfares at the cheapest price available, availing of public transport instead of taxis, using water coolers instead of bottled water, switching off lights and the sending e-mails instead of printed letters.
Surely economic prudence is a virtue in both boom and recession?
Burke’s speech takes less time to read than this article. Political representation for Burke “is no plaything . . . I tremble when I consider the trust I have presumed to ask.”