Things Ministers Don’t Do
Read more about: Irish Politics 
Via.
Mr Dempsey said it was never a bad decision to go on holiday and he did not accept people needed to “see and hear” from him when the conditions were most severe.
“Ministers for Transport don’t actually go out and grit the roads,” he said.
They sure don’t but their quango subordinates have quite a lot to do with that process. Any ‘emergency committee’ worth its salt (geddit?) might have the input of the Minister for Transport to consider, erm, transport. I was in Malta last year, lovel this time of year. No snow, no ice, just balmy sunshine and some sand to stick your head in.
The scale of the shutdown in the country underlines the scale of quangos in control of so many facets of local life. With little likely to come of that insight, I look forward to next winter’s bout of rain/flood/snow/ice.
Meanwhile Suzy has had a look at some of our blogging pols response to the snow and ice.
See, I find it hard to understand what it is exactly that Ministers do to justify their €150K. In the space of seven days we have had Minister Dempsey say that his presence is unnecessary for either the day-to-day running of his department or its ability to handle a national emergency, and minister Brian Lenihan (albeit in tragic circumstances) effectively say in interview that there was nothing that important for him to work on between now and the December budget.
Roughly speaking a UK Cabinet Minister currently earns £144,520 (€160,765), a US Cabinet Secretary earns on average $196,700 (€135,512), so our Ministers by any stretch of the imagination are horrendously overpaid for whatever it is that they actually do.
Given the findings of the McCracken, Mahon and Moriarty tribunals the salaries certainly aren’t enough to keep some of their Ministerial colleagues and certain Taoisigh from accepting the odd brown paper bag whip around, and given Minister Lenihan’s position in the bottom two of the Financial Times rankings for EU Finance Ministers two years in a row we’re certainly not paying them for their expertise.
So can anybody actually say what exactly our Ministers do to justify their outrageous salaries?
oops, slight typo there, according to http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/thepresidentandcabinet/a/prescababout.htm US Cabinet Secretaries only make $193,400, about €133,350 or roughly €17K less than their Irish counterpart. My bad.
Cian,
The death toll from this current cold snap across Europe is running at 150 in Poland, 25 in the UK, at least 9 in Germany (supposedly homeless people) and 22 in avalanches in Switzerland and so on, depending on which news reports you read and how countries compile the statistics on the number of deaths directly attributable to the onset of the present severe weather conditions. Has anyone seen any reports on the number of deaths here?
The disruption to all forms of travel has been a universal experience across Northern Europe, even in countries that are well acquainted to dealing with severe winters.
Noel Dempsey might have been better off not taking his winter break at all this year, though he could not, no more than anyone else, have known that the cold snap would turn out to be so prolonged and so severe. But for argument’s sake, if a government figure taking their family holidays in August or a city break over Easter or a trip to the US in September in any particular year (as some of our politicians do, in fact) and their absence coincided with a freak weather event such as the tail end of a hurricane hitting our shores, or God forbid, a tsunami(as could happen at any time) wiping out the south coast; or even some major political event occurring such as the sudden death of a major political figure or a terrorist incident, would the entire media be entitled to rage at the fact that they weren’t here?
Politicians, government and opposition, are entitled to take holiday breaks the same as anyone else. It’s political humbug when they try to conceal them (e.g. by giving phone interviews to radio stations and releasing statements to the media without revealing their sunny whereabouts) as much as it’s media humbug to decry them for taking a break in the first place.
The real problem we’ve had in the past couple of weeks, as you point out, is with the plethora of agencies and quangoes and councils and emergency committees, passing the buck to one another instead of having the brains to come out and say they were doing the best they could, they can’t make the situation perfect, but that their priorities were to minimise potential loss of life, make sure old people and others in parlous circumstances didn’t suffer unduly and that the rest would have to wait for the thaw.
Item in today’s Irish Times states that there is a Govt document which lists which Govt dept is responsible in the event of emergencies and it clearly states that in the event of severe weather that the dept of the Environment is the lead govt dept with sole responsibility for identifying the emergency,reacting to it and driving a central govt response. Clearly no one in govt knew this.
And that Minister Dempsey should have been in charge when Slovakian security accidentally put explosives on a plane to Dublin.
P,
Indeed. And when he’d finished sniffing his way through the cargo hold of every plane searching for explosives, he could have taken another turn on the snow plows clearing the runways. The omniscience and omnipotence required of our politicians is awesome.
Veronica: I presume the reason people expect things from Mr Dempsey is because he has always taken a great interest in things like the M3 going through Tara and the Shell getting its way in Mayo etc.
Eddie,
He also took an interest in a lot of other things – like serious electoral reform, changes to the planning system, the introduction of e-voting, reform of third level education funding (incl. reintroduction of fees), introduction of spatial strategy, tax on plastic bags etc. I had some dealings with him when he was Minister for the Environment and like many others at that time, I had to admit that he was an innovative minister and committed to the service of the public. You don’t have to agree with his policy position on particular issues nor even with any of his ideas, but at least he has ideas and he hasn’t been afraid to argue the toss for them in the public arena. Pity we don’t have a few more like him in national politics across all our main political parties.
By the way, why is it that those who complain loudest about ’state interference’ in this or that aspect of their lives demand a ‘nanny-state’ approach whenever there’s a problem that might upset their daily routine? This whole debate is a distraction. It’s also one that politicians in government can’t ever win, irrespective of their party affiliation, as numerous past examples would illustrate.
Veronica: You bring up a very good point about “state interference”. Sensible people believe that the state should interfere for the common good. But snsible now see that the state is abdicating its responsibility in this regard to the private sector e.g. banking, health, infrastructure, quangos, consultancies etc.
And what do we get instead? exactly, a nanny state with idiotic smoking bans, terrorised motorists, fear created by a compo culture, incomprehensible planning laws etc.
In relation to the topic being discussed, I’m not sure I see the relevance of inserting the phrase (supposedly Homeless People) in the third comment.
Is this meant to imply that the death of a homeless person is of less importance, or is it simply a judgemental and prejudicial comment.
AK,
You’ve got the wrong end of the stick there! Media reports from Germany said nine homeless people had died there due to the cold snap, but did not mention any other deaths from people falling through ice on lakes or traffic accidents or elderly epople freezing to death in their own homes etc. as were included in the information supplied from other countries.
swear i read or heard somewhere last week that ireland (and spain and uk and portugal) have the highest ratios of deaths from cold weather in europe. surprising as it seems.
people in ireland have died from this weather, inevitably, its not something for ministers to make glib remarks about
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1218/breaking43.htm