Connect: 'The level of misspent money is relatively very, very small," Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey told RTÉ. He was attempting to defend this Government's record of providing value for money. So, about €150,000,000 wasted on health service computers and about €24,000,000 wasted on an unsuitable site for a replacement Mountjoy jail are Mickey Mouse amounts? Good man Noel! Let's hope it keeps fine for you.
These are just recent examples of the Government's squander. Remember Martin Cullen's electronic voting machines wasted a mere €55,000,000 or so. It's important to write the sums out sometimes because "million" or even "billion" (regularly abbreviated to "m" or "bn") don't quite do justice to the amounts involved.
Okay, you expect politicians to try to defend their disasters. But let's be clear about this: the remarks of Noel Dempsey and the attack on RTÉ by Minister for Justice Michael McDowell over highlighting his waste of public money in buying a north Dublin site for the replacement Mountjoy jail were arrogant, contemptuous and insulting. In a single word they are bullying.
When, as at the top of this column, numbers are written out in full, it's also crucial that language be as exact as possible. It is tempting to use the most damning adjectives too regularly (and, no doubt, even the fairest and least hyperbolic columnists sometimes do) but this week's guff from Dempsey and McDowell truly was arrogant, contemptuous and insulting.
These sums, despite Dempsey's dismissal, are not "relatively very, very, small". Even the three listed (there are dozens more, some of the more egregious arguably in transport - toll
bridges; Luas; Port Tunnel) amount to more than half of one per cent of the Government's €41,000,000,000 budget. (€229 million is close to 0.6 per cent of €41 billion and overall waste is far greater than that.)
There's waste and there's waste, of course. Politicians, pursuing either ideology or opportunism, frequently charge opponents with being wasteful. But there's incontrovertible waste too, and no amount of arrogant guff can disguise it. Like the electronic voting machines debacle, both the health service computer mess and the land-purchase for a new prison are indefensible.
Thus it shows contempt for the public that Dempsey or McDowell should attack critics rather than admit the Government's errors. The computer and prison fiascos are beyond defending. These fiascos are unlike some of the other projects with the wealthy backers and friends of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. There's no "wriggle room", lads!
So, this Government has wasted people's money - full stop. Every party has done it at some time, but this Government's waste has been gross and spectacular. In fact, the misspent money that Dempsey insists is on a "very, very small" level is - with just the three examples used here - more than half this State's €545,000,000 foreign aid this year.
Perhaps, then, instead of describing the waste as "very, very small" he might halve his description and describe this Government's foreign aid budget as just "very small". After all, on his scale of relativity, it deserves such a description. I wouldn't, however, hold my breath. Bertie Ahern told the United Nations last month that Irish aid is "effective aid" and Dempsey is an Ahern cheerleader.
"The Green Party is against everything," he interjected on his leader's behalf this week as Green Party leader Trevor Sargent pressed Ahern in the Dáil on the proposed giant sewage works on the Fingal coast.
"This matter should be dealt with by the council and not in this House," added Dempsey, to try to rescue the Taoiseach from a rapidly growing political stink.
This Government, like Britain's "New" Labour government and the Tory government that preceded it, has simply been in power too long. Some of its Ministers have, as the saying goes, far too big a welcome for themselves. They really do seem to believe their own dope. Hence their insufferable arrogance. It happens of course: complacency sets in and contempt inevitably follows.
It's not merely an FF or PD disease, although prolonged power has arguably left core supporters of these parties especially susceptible to the arrogance virus. Were they to hold power for a comparable period of time, Opposition parties might not behave with less arrogance. Still, we can only deal with the present and this week, this Government has behaved in an appalling manner.
A general coarsening in society has been observable for perhaps two decades now. Everybody knows about workplace and schoolroom bullying - indeed a seminar on the topic this week heard that bullying costs business €3,000,000,000 a year - but political bullying, outside the cut and thrust of the game, is rife too.
It's a pity bullying costs business €3 billion a year. It is instructive, however, that the cost of the thuggery is so measured. It costs many people far more than money every year.
"The best decisions are made when the voice of those most affected by the decision is fully taken into account," Bertie Ahern told the World Bank in 2003. His arrogant Ministers should practise what he preached.