Cliff Taylor: Government working overtime to get ‘bad news’ stories out of the way

The long procession of pre-election “good news” announcements is well under way. The Government jobs strategy is now being cut up and remixed like a batch of illegal drugs and is being redistributed to the public on a regular basis.

Jobs announcements are an almost daily occurrence. Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton, it appears, gets to announce the ones involving two-digit job numbers. Go above 100 and you have a good chance of getting the Taoiseach along. Hit four figures, like Apple, and the queue of Ministers tying themselves to the announcement is a lengthy one.

You can only imagine the PR planning that is going on in relation to the payment of the extra social welfare bonus at Christmas and the USC cuts which are due to hit people’s pay packets in January.

The Government will be hoping this all resonates with the electorate and that it benefits Labour and Fine Gael; the larger party needs the smaller one to do well if it wants to get back in to government itself. This was why the November election idea was pulled: it would have threatened the “arm-in-arm” approach towards the electorate.

But there is something else going on: an apparent mix of circumstance and planning which is removing or postponing much of the potential “bad news” as well as issues that might irritate sections of the community. Just look at what happened over the last couple of weeks and the potential controversies that have been neutralised or put off.

First, the IBRC inquiry has run into the sand and whatever happens, nothing meaningful will emerge before the general election, as was confirmed by this week’s interim report from the commission of inquiry.

You could argue about how this problem wasn’t spotted when the commission was set up in June, but certainly by the end of August the Government was aware of the confidentiality issue and that it woulddelay the investigation, at the very least. Someone somewhere calculated there would be a row about this, but that it would pass.

Another controversial issue which the Government could have faced was the final ruling from the European Commission on the Apple tax situation, which it had held in a preliminary opinion was illegal state aid from the Government to the US giant. While the issues are historic, the Coalition would have faced a choice on whether to join Apple in appealing against a decision which could have recommended the return of very substantial money in back tax to the exchequer.

You can see how the politics of appealing against a decision that Apple pay a lot of money to the Irish State would have been tricky. The decision was due this month but, as we report today, it could now be delayed until well into next year.

Government control

Then there are the bits of policy that are directly under the Government’s control. This week, we saw the heat being taken out of two other issues.

It has been clear for years the Government had no coherent plan for the introduction of universal health insurance. The risk was that this would be used as a stick with which to beat the Coalition parties in the election campaign, particularly in light of an ESRI report which outlined, for the first time, what this might all cost.

Now the Government has parked the plan, so the two parties can go to the electorate without facing questions about the cost to households of the plan – and able to say they are looking at alternatives. It is not ideal, but it is a lot better to be going to the hustings on this basis than on the basis that everyone would be paying a hefty health insurance bill.

Finally, there are the lawyers. The Law Library and the Bar Council failed to kill the legal reform Bill off at birth, so they engaged in a guerrilla warfare campaign, picking away relentlessly.

This week, the Government caved in on some key issues, arguing they had no legal power to enact some of the reforms in relation to these two institutions. It is farcical this is only emerging now in relation to a Bill published in 2011. There will be some reforms, but nothing like the extent of changes originally promised.

Potential row

Once the troika left town without the original Bill enacted, the legal profession pushed one last time and found a Government that decided to neutralise another potential row. As we saw during the defeated 2011 campaign on the proposed change to the Constitution to allow the Oireachtas to establish inquiries , lawyers can be powerful opponents.

Other boxes have also been ticked. Water charges have been cut to farcical levels. Other planned charges have been ditched. Public pay cuts are being gradually unwound.

When governments go to the electorate in bad times, they try to create distractions. In contrast, this Government wants to keep the focus on the improving economy and minimise anything which might take the focus away from this. In the same way as the economy is now providing the good news, the potential “bad news” hits are being defused one by one.

However, it is in the Opposition’s interest to find new ones. And “events” will surely intervene, with a couple of months – at least – before an election is called. The warnings of those who wanted a November election – that you don’t know what’s coming – will still be ringing in the ears of Taoiseach Enda Kenny.