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Draining the Parish Pump
Read more about: Fianna Fail
[Originally posted to Wulfbeorn, Watching]
Alan Ruddock makes a strong point in today’s Sunday Times which I omitted from my original post on the subject of the Great Southern Hotels.
In so many words, he points out that if the hotels had been sold back in 1999 while they were still profitable, it’s highly unlikely that their staff would have been faced today with the possibility of redundacy. So, ultimately, the actions of the unions seven years ago have turned out to be against the interests of the very people that they were representing. Or as he puts it:
A once profitable company, which could have been sold successfully by the government in 1999, is now reduced to penury. It has lost money in ever-greater amounts for the past three years, is in danger of being shut down and needs a large injection of fresh capital if it has to have a future.
The employees, or at least a large proportion of them, could have had a secure future if Mary O’Rourke, as transport minister, had sold the hotels seven years ago. That she didn’t was not necessarily her fault: then, as now, a number of cabinet ministers were against the sale and the trade unions were as implacably opposed as now.
GSH cried out for clear thinking and decisive action. The state, which acquired the hotels because they were attached to railway companies, had no strategic interest in owning them. A sale was as simple as it was logical. In the late 1990s, the economy and the tourist industry were booming and the hotels could have been sold as viable going concerns.
Instead of clear thinking, we get parish pump politics. John O’Donoghue, now the minister for tourism and then minister for justice, opposes the sale because thereÂs a hotel in his constituency. Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, is always reluctant to contradict the wishes of the trade unions (and, surprise, surprise, there’s a hotel in his constituency too). The unions believe that politics is as much, if not more, their business as the welfare of their members. That means privatisations have to be opposed, even if they are in the best interest of the state and the workers.
Ruddock goes on to describe the GSH fiasco as one which encapsulates Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s all-round failure to show decisive leadership, in preference for the parish pump and the appeasement of the union constituency.
The big question is whether the political climate in this country will continue to allow such a stance go unpunished. Certainly, Fianna Fáil don’t look as if they’re going to let go of their “parish pump” tendencies any time soon, so it will be up to the electorate to demonstrate that they’ve had enough.
And where the electorate go, Fianna Fáil will follow. With the run-up to the next general election in full swing, they face the incredible task of holding onto as many votes as they can from a resurgent Sinn Féin, while simultaneously maintaining pretensions of economic liberalism - something which is in fashion now like never before. The significance of a Dossing Times poll from December may be questioned (!), but there is no doubt that the liberal ideas advocated by the PDs have gained a permanent place in the Irish political psyche. Will this translate into votes on election day? Are Fianna Fáil paying attention? You bet they are.
It promises to be an exciting year.
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