Barry Cowen admits sneaking regard for Tánaiste’s ability to sidestep queries

Some things are a lot easier to do than you’d think. Like getting a system in place to pay the water conservation grant to 1.3 million households. Apparently it’s like getting used to using an iPad. That’s the comparison Tánaiste Joan Burton used to explain the issue to the Dáil.

Or even a bit like “planning a household budget for a week”. You’d have to sit down and do a bit of preparation, like.

That’s what you need, it seems, to implement the new social welfare-like payment.

It will be issued through the Department of Social Protection and will be the largest scheme ever paid by the department. It will require consultants, advertising, more staff, postal costs, legal costs, procurement costs, more IT. Still, just like becoming familiar with the iPad.

On the other hand the Tánaiste said that if a “department is planning a new system for a significant payment to most households in the country, of course there must be a project team and an implementation plan”.

And in all of it, she completely avoided answering the question she was repeatedly asked by Fianna Fáil environment spokesman Barry Cowen and Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald: how much implementation is going to cost.

Barry admitted to something of a sneaking regard for this ability to avoid answering the question, a regular part of the Tánaiste’s repertoire of skills.

Weekly failing

He reminded her it was her duty to inform the Dáil’s elected representatives what was being spent and how. She’d failed to do that, a weekly failing of hers. “More luck to her – I commend her on that feat,” he said. But he warned her “the electorate might not do so”.

The Opposition had smelt political blood after the Fianna Fáil man put in a freedom of information request and RTÉ accessed it as well. The result? A letter from the secretary general of Social Protection to her counterpart in Public Expenditure about the need for additional resources to process and pay the grant to households.

The secretary general warned that the cost of setting up and implementing the system could not be met from existing resources.

Did the Tánaiste write the letter, Barry asked. She didn’t. Did she discuss it with the secretary general? “Yes of course I have.”

“Making it up as they go along,” sneered Fianna Fáil’s Niall Collins. “I understand why Fianna Fáil seems to be sneering, with regret,” she retorted. This was “exactly what it was unable to do in its latter years in Government, when it lost control of the country’s finances”.

The rough figures are 1.3 million households though the Tánaiste repeatedly referred to “over 1 million”, an apparent reference to the non-compliant, up to 40 per cent of households.

‘Loose ends’

Then it was Mary Lou’s turn to ask the questions about what she called the “sweetener” or the “bribe”. She referred to Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly’s comments that the cost of administering the grant was €130 million in total and that he had given the impression that “all the loose ends had been tied up”. But they haven’t, she said. This should all have been analysed, considered and costed when the debate was under way, so the Minister wouldn’t give “misleading figures”.

“Like the Sinn Féin budget,” quipped Emmet Stagg.

Joan waltzed on with the comment that all the required resources to ensure the successful delivery of the water grant would be put in place.

But she still didn’t say what it would cost. And observers noted that when it came to water charges there wasn’t a Fine Gael Minister to be seen for debate on this boiling hot topic.