PD’s Leaders address

This is the last of my trilogy of PD conference post. The reason I have done these three is mainly as I have nothing else to do today. Hopefully some of the other bloggers here might write their thoughts on the conference to give a more rounded view. You can find links to the speeches in the Party News section of IrishElection. That been said here is my view on Mary Harney’s speech. This is based on the online speech which might be a bit different then the TV speech. You can watch the speech on Limerick Blogger thanks to Squid.

This being the weekend of the Munster Leinster no conference should go without out a reference and indeed it did not. With Mary saying that the match was moved to Sunday for the Progressive Democrats and not anything to do with French TV.

Her speech was different in many respects to the leaders speeches of the other parties. Where the other leaders said quiet specifically what they were going to do like Enda Kenny saying they will “increase paid leave by 10 weeks in the first year of a Childs life.” Mary Harney’s speech was devoid of specifics. The big announcement expected was going to be their tax policies. Yet the only reference she gave to them was

Tomorrow, we’ll set out details of our tax policies

Firstly after saying how great the party was she reiterated what the party stood for .

The founding purpose of this party was liberation from the restraints of the past and an embrace of new solutions for the future.

And I don’t just mean the political restraints of the past like the Civil War.
I mean the economic restraints, for example, high tax rates, restrictive practices, anti-consumer barriers, anti-competition rules.

And I mean the social restraints too - those that allowed abuses of power to go unchallenged, the secrecy, the intolerance and the isolation of the past.

The Progressive democrats set themselves out in the mould of libertarians. Small government influence on business and on peoples livies. Right wing liberals if you will. Irish politics is notoriously non-ideological. Where Fine Gael and Fianna Fail haven’t really held firmly to an ideology since the civil war. Indeed if you look at Britain with Labour and the conservatives moving towards the centre and other countries maybe FG and FF were on to something all along. One of the main attacks the PD’s have been getting is the quality of life issue. Mary Harney summed up the very concerns of many on the left have been saying.

But some politicians want to convince you we now have a successful economy and yet a failing society

I have to say that is the best summing up of the point I have seen. Short sweet straight to the heart of the matter. Who knows it could be coming to a Sinn Fein election poster near you yet.

On this issue she held on to the ideological raft.

And so this party remains rooted in the belief that social progress and economic success go together. They’re one and the same. The maths are simple. We need resources in order to spend resources.

The quality of life improvements we all seek in transport, health, housing, education, and childcare can be achieved, and will be achieved, with economic success. They certainly won’t be achieved without economic success.

And she has a point we have never had tax revenues as high in this country and we have never had it so good. True traffic congestion is bad but at least people are on the M50 in Dublin not the M25 in London. However most people realise this they see the merits of the low tax regime. Even Sinn Fein the most socialist (Tom Disagrees) of Irish parties are only asking for corporation tax to rise to 18%. Are there many right wing parties in Europe advocating that low a corporation tax? Mary points this out.

And, of course, we actually delivered the low taxes. For 20 years, they opposed every single tax cut, but now say they agree.

Most people get the economic argument that you need money to get money. The thing that gets people is how it is spent. Although Eddie Hobbs’s show showed that people still think they are paying to much tax it also showed people wanted more bang for their buck.

One of the things needs to get more bangs for your buck is for the government to take on the special interests that have adequate practices. She mentioned that she has taken on the insurance industry and Michael McDowell took on the Prison guards. However there was no mention in her speech of the other special interests in the public sector. That is hindering much of the reforms that are needed.

The big issue for her, the government and the country is A&E. Much of the PD’s election chances will depend on it. On this she said (I can’t remember this bit in the speech but it is online so I will presume it was)

“Our Accident and Emergency services will be improved, hospital by hospital, because the public rightly demand and deserve it.

There are 53 acute public hospitals in the country. 35 have A&E departments. About ten of these have had consistent difficulties. Each is being addressed urgently by the HSE.”

That is about all she said on the issue no policy announcement. Basically she has a year to sort out A&E announcing a policy on it is not going to have much political capital.

She then moves back to the PD’s turf. The Economy. Attacking the opposition

We encourage private enterprise: they just about tolerate it.

We reward risk-taking. They ignore it.

We understand profit. They are embarrassed by it.

We’ll get the private sector to create 1,000 new public hospital beds, at less than half the cost of doing things the old way. We’ll have both the private and public sector investing in new hospitals and new public beds. But they say, stop it! Stop private investment at all costs! They insist the taxpayers alone must foot the entire bill for new public hospital beds ‘ including reserved private beds too.

That’s just typical - ideology first, solutions last.

This is mainly an attack on the Labour party. The Progressive democrats agree with Fine Gael on many economic issues and many of the PD’s voters would consider voting or usually do vote Fine Gael. Thus they emphasise Labour role in the government, insinuating that they will drive the Fine Gael to the left. Funnily enough I did mention about ideology about the labour party conference before as well. But are the PD’s not also being driven by ideology when she they talk about lowering tax? Lowering tax has helped our country boom however it is unclear whether this will solve all our problems.

We believe scarce taxpayers’ money should be invested in schools and hospitals as a priority. They insist taxpayers must invest hundreds of millions of euro in State airplanes

This I have to say I whole heartily agree with. We do not need a state airline. Government should not be in business on any occasion other then when they are the only ones that are going to provide a vital service. With Ryanair and Delta this case is impossible to make. Labour want to invest more in Aer Lingus yet they do not want to cut taxes. What departmental budget is it going to come from?

The coalition has not come out yet with much of their policies for government waiting until later to reveal them. This maybe because of three reasons. 1.) They don’t have them yet. 2.) They don’t want the government to take them. 3.) They want to give less time for the government to debunk them. Mary calls them on this.

I challenge the other parties to do the same: how much you will tax, how much you will spend, how you will reform. People have a right to hear it now. It’s time to get off the fence.

It will be interesting to see how this will play with the electorate. Labour and Fine Gael have been pretty stable in the polls. With the Greens and Sinn Fein the biggest risers. Is this stability in Fine Gael and Labours numbers do to the electorate not knowing their plans? We will see.

On their website the PD’s declare they are the liberal party of Ireland. Yet most people consider them the most conservative party. This is something that I imagine they would like to debunk and gain the liberal vote. Indeed they have some claim to it. Liz O’Donnell’s speech on ferns calling for the separation of the Church from state schools (Personnel I have no problem with clergy in schools just religion in schools figure that one out ) would not have come out of many other parties. The main thing that has caused the PD’s to be seen as the conservative Irish party was the citizen referendum. Now the tables have turned. It is the PD’s now advocating open borders and Labour restrictive borders.

There is another difference that goes beyond economic policy: this government gave full rights to all EU citizens to come and work in our country. Our opponents now think out loud about taking away those rights and play to fears about immigration.

In this party, we emphatically reject politics that play to fear and suspicion of foreigners. This scaremongering is a poison.

What a difference a few years makes.

Unlike the opposition parties. The government party conferences can do little. Where the opposition can say we will do this and this. All the government parties can do is we have done this. In the end the PD’s will be judged largely on the fortunes of Mary Harney and Michael McDowell they have 1 year to make good. The clock is ticking.