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So what would a General Election do for us?
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“Tabloid politics” was how Mary O’Rourke described the Dail Debate on the Confidence Motion. And she was right.
There was no policy discussion of merit – apart from Brian Lenihan‘s effort – about where we are going and what we need to do to get there. Insults were liberally traded on all sides. Enda Kenny dubbed Willie O’Dea the “Groucho Marx of the Government” and later asked Dick Roche (twice) if he had taken his tablets. Someone else called Joan Burton the ‘Mistress of Spin’. Leo Varadkar revealed the secret fantasy of Fine Gael that might yet come to pass: “If Fine Gael fares well enough we may lead the government with the support of a smaller party.”
And he did not mean Labour; most definitely not. “Alternatively, it might mean a coalition of Fine Gael and Labour,” he went on, “or even Fianna Fail and Labour. The comments made by Deputy Burton on RTE last night reveal this is in the mind of Labour Party members.” Ouch!
In summary, the debate was all a dreadful waste of time.
Still, the sooner the election the better it will be for Fine Gael who stand to maximise seat gains on the back of their mid term triumph. Leave it a year or so and even if the economy is showing signs of recovery they are still the best bet to lead the next administration. But the longer it goes, the more likely the new government will be comprised of Fine Gael and Labour because they won’t have the numbers for anything else.
Irrespective of rhetoric to the contrary, the surge in public support for Fine Gael and for Labour is still soft and may diminish rather than consolidate over time. It is too much based on public anger with Fianna Fail and disdain for the hapless Greens in a mid-term election where the results could make no difference to the exercise of power at national level.
But what would an immediate general election mean for the rest of us? We might be tempted to break out the champagne – if we could still afford it – at the prospect of kicking the present government out. Beyond that, what would we get?
A €4bn adjustment to the public finances will still be required in the December Budget, irrespective of who is in power. Fine Gael policy is firmly focussed on cuts – probably as many as 15,000 public servants and a freeze on pay increases and even increments. No matter what way you look at it, this means severe cuts in public services, with those at the base of the power pyramid most likely to bear the brunt of it. Labour’s policy in the cuts area is not clear as yet, but it is hardly likely that in any government they would support Fine Gael’s favoured policy measures.
Then there’s the banks. No functioning banking system, no economic recovery – we all know that. Nama goes off the table to be replaced by Fine Gael’s ‘good bank’ solution. Or does it? There’s a lot of expert opinion out there that warns against the ‘good bank’ option as potentially catastrophic and leading to an immediate run on the banks.
As for unemployment, the truth is nobody’s got a handle on that yet. Lots of ideas around, but most of them too timid to make much of a difference, or too far fetched or too reminiscent of the failed and expensive populist initiatives of the mid 1980s. If we have learned anything from the boom years it should be that it is economic growth that creates jobs, not government make work schemes.
So while our political class disport themselves with electioneering and point scoring and posters, there would be all those serious economic decisions left to moulder and the potential for a bad situation to turn into an even worse one for those ‘hard working ordinary families’ so beloved of our political leadership.
Finally our international obligations mean there is little room for maneouvre for any incoming government to set a different course than the one we are on already, except for tinkering around the edges.
The benefits of an election would thus accrue only to the political class. The rest of us would be left swinging in the wind, as usual. General Election, No Thanks.
Veronica, “There’s a lot of expert opinion out there that warns against the ‘good bank’ option as potentially catastrophic and leading to an immediate run on the banks.” I’m not sure how the good bank idea would lead to a run on the banks i.e. people withdrawing their deposit savings. It could mean a collapse in their share price but the state isn’t there to save investors especially if the banks are actually insolvent. We’d merely be stepping in to manage to a collapse that was going to happen anyway.
“A €4bn adjustment to the public finances will still be required in the December Budget, irrespective of who is in power. Fine Gael policy is firmly focussed on cuts – probably as many as 15,000 public servants and a freeze on pay increases and even increments. No matter what way you look at it, this means severe cuts in public services, with those at the base of the power pyramid most likely to bear the brunt of it. Labour’s policy in the cuts area is not clear as yet, but it is hardly likely that in any government they would support Fine Gael’s favoured policy measures.”
I think that a reduction in costs is what is being aimed for by FG will will end up causing some reduction in public services but here is the thing to remember the aim is to reduce costs not cut services as such. And it would be considerably more cost effective to start at the top. Let me make a suggestion the top 5% of public sector employees would see their salaries cut by 30% and the 15% below that see a cut of 25% the next 30% see a 10% the next 20% see 5% and let’s leave the bottom 30% alone. And then we freeze all salaries and increments for 3 year. If you get a promotion then you get a salary increase but in place increments should be scrapped. That goes for TDs and the like too. Just as we should only earned remission in jails we should have only earned pays increases in the public service.
We should also abolish the public sector pensions completely, instead the state offers the contributions plus interest back to the individual public servant and tells them to go find a pension somewhere in private system that will give them what the old public system gave them. And when they find that they can’t get that they can come back and start to negotiate a new system that would be open to everyone public and private. We have to fix our pensions system but we can’t do it while those best provided for have no concrete understanding of the amazing benefits they get at a discount paid for by everyone else.
As for where could we make cuts or efficiencies. Well take one example, over the 10 years up to last year the number of people employed in the department of social welfare has increased, increased at at a time when unemployment had dropped substantially. Increased to do what? and when the explosion in numbers unemployed and seeking to make claims came these extra numbers were unable to cope leading to months and months of delays in people receiving unemployment benefit which they had paid for. How over the course of ten years with a reduced workload and more new technology available to make their work easier to manage did we end up employing more people? What is it they all do?
So, if I understand this argument correctly – because an election may be good for Fine Gael, it should be opposed?
And the course that the current government is on, is largely the right tack?
“over the 10 years up to last year the number of people employed in the department of social welfare has increased, increased at at a time when unemployment had dropped substantially. Increased to do what? and when the explosion in numbers unemployed and seeking to make claims came these extra numbers were unable to cope leading to months and months of delays in people receiving unemployment benefit which they had paid for. How over the course of ten years with a reduced workload and more new technology available to make their work easier to manage did we end up employing more people? What is it they all do?”
That is based purely on the assumption that the only welfare they deal with is unemployment benefit, which is not the case. And also based on the assumption that there were originally enough people to deal with the workload, which may not have been the case.
Dan, I’d have to take issue with the examples you give above, and to preface by saying that I’m not a public sector employee and derive non of the supposed benefits.
I could argue the larger economic issue that for every euro taken out of the economy in wages/disposable income we’re effecting a reverse multiplier, but somehow I guess that won’t sway you.
I’d entirely echo what Ian G says. But I’d also suggest that the idea of removing increments and replacing them with promotions is untenable. I’ve worked my life either on contracts or in the private sector and the notion that people only get ‘earned’ wage increases for promotions there is simply incorrect. Moreover it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. For large numbers there won’t be any promotions – particularly if the recession/depression continues, so how do we ensure their wages keep rough step with inflation etc? Furthermore increments are graded IIRC firstly across the first 5-7 years in a civil service public sector job and thereafter at I think 5 yearly intervals. Hardly handsome. One’s not going to wind up a prince.
The idea of abolishing public sector pensions completely sounds great. Well, actually it doesn’t. It would probably be a breach of contract on the part of the state. The point you make about them then going out and trying to find what the public sector gives them but returning seems unconvincing. For a start new entrants since 1995 have been paying much closer to the economic cost of their pensions, the latest levies bring it essentially to parity with good private sector pensions. I hold no brief for those before then, although I’d suggest that in light of how low CS/PS wages were traditionally that this was one of the few means of equalising them with the private sector. I agree with you that there should be a single system, but is that FG policy or is that your own?
its never a bad time or too late to get rid of ff , who think they own the country.
Personally I’m not sure what an election would achieve beyond 4-6 weeks of expensive campaigning followed by a few months of haggling and then a couple of years of “well what can we do” “it’s not out fault” and “blame the last lot”
There are FG supporters, members, and former TDs in the blogosphere and on certain national media outlets who are leading the campaign for an election simply because it is the best thing for Fine Gael and not the best thing for the country. But they haven’t actually thought things out. The last election was one to lose. An election now would still be “one to lose”.
In my opinion Fianna Fail made the mess and Fianna Fail need to spend the next 3 years fixing it. Unfortunately for them fixing it will mean taking decisions that will effectively make the party unelectable for 10-15 years. Fine Gael won’t be able to make those hard decisions if they came to power now. I would compare it to treating a traffic accident victim. Let a trauma team stabilise the patient and then hand her over to a long term treatment team to rehabilitate her. Fine Gael and Labour have a vision for a more caring Ireland than the privatised profit driven state created by FF and the PDs. But if we throw them into power now they will use up all their political capital stabilising the country instead of moving us forward.
I would also draw a distinction between leaving Fianna Fail in power to fix the mess and leaving Brian Cowen in power. The heads of the banks were all eventually forced to resign. Developers are going bankrupt every day. Bertie is a disgraced backbencher. The FF Councillors who voted on rezoning have lost their seats. Middlemen like Frank Dunlop are in jail. The only unpunished person who had a direct involvement in creating the disastrous bubble that exploded in the past year is Brian Cowen. As Finance Minister he masterminded some of the worst economic policies in the history of the state.
Cowen needs to go now and take Coughlan, Lenihan and Harney with him. These three ministers are clearly out of their depth and even three years more in power would do serious harm to the Irish economy (and in Harney’s case harm to the Irish people who she has slaughtered in their hundreds or thousands on the altar of a profit driven privatised health service). The remaining FF ministers can then spend their last 3 years in power stabilising the economy before being voted out of office.
I Think it would be bad for the party. Once they go into power they are judge by what they achieve and are unlikely to turn around the country in 6 months. Look at the Greens if they stayed out of power they would have doubled their seats in the locals. If I was a political stragiest. I would my party to stay out of power for ever. Eventually they would win 166 seats.
but hey for the people who don’t like ff or fg they both get damaged. while we get em….
When a comment of Mary O’Rourke is used to support an argument, I am reminded of a discussion I had with her many years ago when FF were in opposition and she and FF wre being totally negative using cynical opportunistic politics and making the particular problem worse.I asked her in the course of the discussion did she not think the opposition had a duty to the general public and she replied”My dear child , the only function of the opposition is to embarrass the government”I think many people were aware of this mentality and that is why many voted FF in 2007,they knew FF in opposition would render the country ungovernable.We would hvae street marches and riots and general strikes by now.
Several of the responses above suggest – correctly, I think – that there is no great political advantage to either FG or Labour in taking over the reins of power right now. Apart, that is, from the personal satisfaction to some of their members of finally attaining the office of government ministers. But there’s no great advantage to us, the citizens, in having a general election right now either, apart from the pleasure some of us might experience in not having FF at the helm any more and the added health benefit of not throwing up every time we have to listen to some of them on the airwaves.
There’s no way out of the €4bn adjustment in public spending in Budget 2010 and a further €4bn in 2011 unless a new administration can convince the European Commission that their plan will also bring Ireland’s general government balance back to within 3% of GDP by 2013. And as I understand it, even that level of adjustment is premised on a fairly benign scenario – that the international situation will not deteriorate further and that here there will be a return to some sort of modest growth levels from 2011 onwards. Otherwise, the adjustment may have to be even mroe severe than anticipated.
Thus, if a general election was called in the morning, all the parties would have to put before the electorate as manifestoes is a series of ‘tombstone lists’ of cuts in public pay and services, plus increases in new forms of taxation, plus curbs on social welfare spending through cuts in benefits etc.
There’s precious little scope for borrowing our way out of this crisis beyond what we are doing already. To even suggest we could implies bequeathing a crippling debt to future generations as their problem, not ours. Apart from being politically amoral and economically insane, (even if it sounds good to the public), it just wouldn’t be possible anyway in the current international market. Indeed to even suggest that this might be the course chosen by any incoming administration might result in our capacity to borrow the €12bn or so needed to keep the ship of state afloat to the end of this year immediately drying up.
Same applies to the nasty reality of the banks’ problem – the interests of the State and the interests of the banks are closely bound up with one another. To clarify my remarks on this point: the risks perceived as attaching to FG’s good bank plan are generally twofold – 1. that it’s never been tried anywhere else and that Ireland is not really ideally placed to be a ‘test’ case for such an experiment, and 2. that the ‘good bank’ plan inevitably implies that the ‘legacy banks’ will default on bonds beyond the cut off date of September 2010. The argument goes that as soon as this cut off date became known it would precipitate a run on the banks. Since investors are an international club there might be immediate serious implications too for the sale of Irish Government Bonds. Bank bonds may not be the same as Government bonds, but it’s all a matter of international perception. So an immediate general election and uncertainty around the mechanism that will be used to ‘fix’ the banks toxic loans could have severe and unintended consequences of an unforseen kind that certainly wouldn’t do much for the lives of ordinary citizens.
Far from suggesting that FF is on the right course to steer us out of this crisis, my point is that the framework for resolving our deficit problems and our financial system problems is pretty much set. It has been forced on the government, rather than chosen by them. No doubt they would prefer to be implementing the Alice in Wonderland Programme for Government that they drew up with the Green Party two years ago than having to make difficult decisions of the kind now foisted upon them and having to refine and readjust their preferred options as rapidly as circumstances require. Any incoming administration would have no more latitude than the present incumbents, and possibly even less after the time lost though a general election, so I hold to my view that an immediate general election would not make the lives of citizens any better.
Which brings us to the issue of confidence: I agree with Colm’s overall point that if Brian Cowen and his ministerial team do not raise their game significantly over the summer then a general election will become inevitable, probably before the end of the year or early next year. Cowen has some very painful political decisions to make about the composition of his team and their capacity for the jobs they currently hold. The question is: is he capable of it?
I would agree that a general election wouldn’t bring much benefit to the public now. Besides, we have just been through an election cycle and nobody has the energy or stomach for another run immediately – not the public, not the tired party activists.
We need a cooling off period now to absorb the results of our European and local votes. Then when the batteries are charged we, the people and parties, might be ready to answer the big question of who should govern now.
Veronica, you end with the question about what Cowen is capable of (in particular, can he re-invent himself with a new team). Frankly I think Cowen has already demonstrated that he does not have the leadership qualities now required to gain the confidence of the people. He did not rise to the occasion. In the beginning he picked a lousy team, he failed to communicate with the public at a time of crisis(recall his key speeches were to party members or select groups like the Dublin Chamber of Commerce), he wasn’t decisive, by remaining agitated and defensive he lost any sense of authority of control, he very much gave the impression of party first or keep it in the party, and not once did seize the opportunity of crisis to take a fresh approach to politics. In short, Cowen I think is irreparably damaged as a leader.
Ian G, actually I am aware that there are other groups of people who are serviced by the social welfare system but the unemployed are the only group that would see large shifts in numbers. The numbers of the elderly, those with life long disabilities hasn’t radically altered in that time hence my questioning. As for whether they were previously able to cope as someone who was unemployed I don’t recall it taking months and months for a claim to be processed back in the late 80s/early 90s. Now it is true that the rise then was more incremental that the dramatic jump of the last 12 months but we have more people available now and they do get advanced notice that people will be coming for to make claims as many of the job losses are being announced on the News months in advance.
As for increments they are for time served by individuals and not the sort of cost of living increases that are typically negotiated by unions. Why pay person X more who is doing the same job for the last 10 years simply because they are doing it for ten years? And as we often see if there are changes made to the work even if it is to make it easier then they are paid for those changes, a la the Gardai and PULSE. That case with the DART drivers a few years back getting paid more simply to allow new drivers to be hired and trained just to drive DART trains and yet after all the lumps sums and pay increases that they still went on strike for yet more money once the new guys had finished training and were to start work. It was an extreme example but illustrative of the mindset of some elements in the public service who have a stranglehold on a practical function. Hospital Consultants are equally as bad. Increments on a case by case basis for those who are doing more than they did 10 years ago are reasonable but across the board increases simply because of time served are not.
I accept that abolishing the pensions would be for all practical purposes next to impossible but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still the result that should be aimed for. Also, we must end the ongoing link between pay scales and pensions. The idea that senior people who had retired 10 years ago in the civil service have been seeing huge increases in their pension payments because of benchmarking in the public service is utterly wrong. There is equally a good argument that the various tax avoidance aspects of the private pension system should be similarly eliminated. The idea that simply because it’s going towards your pension a la Fingers/Fingleton that you can pay not tax on it is a rip-off of the tax system by those with the most income. The pension system should have as its aim that people once retired are able to live in comfort and dignity and not that they can live large for 20/30 years by virtue of taking the profit of their labours post an early retirement.
WbS, while it isn’t unreasonable to wonder if the words of Frank Flannery might be in some way the views of the party, I think it would stretching things to say that the views of little old me might be code for party thinking. So my views are pretty much my own in this instance. Sure I’d like if someone from the party read them once in a while and sought to incorporate them into policy but that’s a pretty forlorn hope. Unfortunately it appears that policy development is the sole preserve of the parliamentary party and I will openly admit that they have to have a role as they are the ones who had to convince the public of any policy adopted I simply don’t see sufficient wattage to do this across all areas. John (Semper) and I have disagreed on this in the past. And justto note but I would say the same applies to all the parties in the Oireachtas. Our system isn’t designed to generate ideas.
WbS, “I could argue the larger economic issue that for every euro taken out of the economy in wages/disposable income we’re effecting a reverse multiplie” but in order to not take that euro out and pay it to someone so that would be in the economy it has to come from somewhere else. So either it comes in the form of more taxation on other people or reduced spending elsewhere in the public sector. The idea that we should continue to pay people X because otherwise that Euro won’t be in the economy doing work is nonsense. Where does the Euro come from? We’d have to borrow it and we’re borrowing bucket loads as it is to keep lots of the other Euros in the economy. We can’t keep them all in there because we’ve a massive deficit.
Euros don’t fall out of the sky, of course if the ECB really goes down the road of quantitative easing then all bets are off.