Government by SpAd
Read more about: Economy, National Development Plan 
In the downloadable rich text version (large file) of Building Ireland’s Smart Economy, one can check the file properties and see the author identified as Peter Clinch. Peter Clinch is a Special Advisor (or SpAd, as Guido calls them) in the Department of an Taoiseach. Now that’s fine. Someone had to coordinate the different components of the document. But it calls into question who exactly was involved in drawing up this document and how it was put together. How can it be a joined up government if this document was just rushed together by special advisors with little input from the regular policy apparatus in departments, let alone NESC and the whole social partnership structure that is supposed to happen before these documents come out?
UPDATE: Michael Casey demolishes the report.
http://www.entemp.ie/press/2008/20081118.htm
Looks very like the new 500million announcement presented yesterday. Only it was announced a month ago.
I don’t think I’ll bother reading it. I took the trouble to look up Clinch – according to the Indo when Cowan appointed him
“It is expected his main task will be to advise policy initiatives to help the Government meet climate change targets while maintaining a secure economy.”
It looks to me like he was in his office last week when Cowan phoned,
“you’ll do, write me some guff on a framework for development. After all you worked in West Africa on that sort of stuff; next Thursday, OK? ”
Bye, Barry
I think your question “How can it be a joined up government if this document was just rushed together by special advisors” is apt. I’ve commented elsewhere (http://www.politics.ie/economy/39129-smart-economy-thick-about-daa-plans.html) how the second ‘key action’ in ‘Action Area 4: Investing in Critical Infrastructure’ is the DAA’s shelved investment plan for Dublin Airport. The DAA’s announcement of the scale-back in investment appeared in papers on the morning that the Smart Economy document was published as if those plans were still going to happen in full. That’s not even joined-up media handling, never mind joined up government.
But the report seems to have died a death anyway. Will we ever hear of it again?
I think it’s becoming clear that the report was a cut-and-paste job. We’ll never hear of it again.