Stupidity on a truly heroic scale

It's only when you look at the details that you understand the heroic scale of the idiocy, the magnificent, awe-inspiring, sublime stupidity of it all. The top-of-the-head, back-of-the-envelope nature of the Government's decentralisation programme does, admittedly, have the immediate appearance of a grand folly.

But you have to work it out in concrete terms before you can appreciate its full grandeur.

Let's take just one example. Last month the Medical Bureau of Road Safety published a report on drug-driving. The bureau tested 2,000 samples taken from drivers by the Garda, half of them over the limit for alcohol. They found that an astonishing 68 per cent of people with low levels of alcohol were actually positive for drugs. Sixteen per cent of all tested drivers were high on something other than drink. Clearly, we have a problem.

So who's in charge of deciding and implementing the public response to this problem? Last week, Noel Ahern, the Minister of State who runs the National Drugs Strategy, was on Morning Ireland. The issue of drug-driving was raised and he was asked the simple question, "Is as much being done as could be done?" His reply: "I'm Minister dealing with the Drugs Strategy, we're the Department who co-ordinate the activities of the other Departments. Driving wouldn't be specifically under my responsibility. I'm just trying to say, sadly, I'm not in control of everything. That's covered under the Road Traffic Act and the implementation of it but what we're doing blah blah local inputs blah blah alternative lifestyles blah blah sports centres, youth centres." The one thing that was clear amid a barrage of verbiage was that the self-declared "Department who co-ordinate the activities of the other Departments" in relation to drug use is passing the buck on this one.

It occurred to me then to wonder what Departments would be involved in this one little area of policy where lives are at stake. The Medical Bureau of Road Safety, which drew up this report, is listed as being "under the aegis of the Department of Transport". Straightforward. But its board is appointed by the Minister for the Environment and its main work is training and supplying the Garda, which is under Justice.

It is based at University College, Dublin, which comes under the Department of Education. A co-ordinated response to the urgent concerns it has raised would involve those departments, the National Drugs Strategy, which is run by the Department of Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, the Department of Health, the National Safety Council, which comes under the Department of Transport, but is part-funded by the Department of the Environment, and, since Noel Ahern tells us sports facilities are crucial to combating drugs, the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.

Obviously, at the moment, this fragmentation of responsibility means that no one is in charge of responding to the problem of drug-driving, including the Minister who claims to co-ordinate everyone else. Equally obvious is that in this, as in so many other areas, the real job for public service reform is to break down these institutional barriers and create some joined-up thinking. Instead, a vast amount of time, money and effort is being put into making the whole mess infinitely worse.

Let's map, for a moment, what someone trying to deal with drug-driving will be faced with if and when the Government's decentralisation programme is fully implemented. Noel Ahern, or his successor at Community and Rural and Gaeltacht, is sitting in Knock, Co Mayo, trying to co-ordinate the State's response. His staff is in Furbo, Co Galway. The National Safety Council is in Loughrea. The Medical Bureau of Road Safety is still in Dublin, as is the State Laboratory which is involved in testing.

The Department of the Environment is in Wexford, with staff in New Ross, Waterford and Kilkenny. The Department of Education is in Athlone. The Department of Justice is partly in Tipperary. Garda headquarters is in Thurles. The Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism is in Killarney. The Department of Health is at some unknown location yet to be decided. All of these organisations have, meanwhile, lost much of the expertise they have built up in this area because the people who had it are now dealing with fisheries or sewerage.

Come to think of it, it may be no bad thing that there will be no serious response to drug-driving, since whoever is going to be consulting with all these Departments will be on the road so much that he or she will need a ready supply of amphetamines to keep going and of LSD to make an apparently coherent picture out of all of this confusion.

It takes a kind of genius to look at the insanely fragmented system we currently have and to decide that what's wrong with it is that it's too centralised. We already have a system of governance that's about as co-ordinated as a jellyfish on a tricycle, and we're going to shake it all about like a St Vitus hokey-cokey. If the whole thing were an anarchist plot to destroy the State, it would be breathtakingly brilliant. The only hope is that those who are trying to do it won't be able to co-ordinate the strategy.