When the Republican senator Howard Baker Jr asked “what did the president know, and when did he know it?” during the Watergate scandal, he pithily encapsulated the ultimate question when it comes to an emerging political scandal. Often it’s not the actual wrongdoing that brings politicians down, it’s about the knowledge timeline: who knew what and when.
The children’s hospital debacle is currently playing out on the Irish political stage, a rerun of the type of theatre of failure Irish people have a season ticket to, something so familiar that often we don’t even bother to take our seats. This again. Find me at the interval drinking gin.
The news has been swirling around that key thing: who knew what and when. Good journalists have a real nose for this stuff, and we’ve seen many of them follow the scent relentlessly.
Of course there's a tedium to the central issue of when officials, Minister Simon Harris and the Taoiseach became aware of budgetary overruns. There is also a pretence to it all considering we all knew it was going to be like this.
Are we really meant to participate in this timeline theatre of Augusts and Novembers when any person in Ireland could have told anyone else it would be over-budget the moment someone in government said “we are going to build a hospital”?
Who could possibly be shocked by yet more overspending on a capital project?
The only novel impact of yet another hames being made of something like this is the increasing regret many of us have for not putting “consultant” down on the CAO form, whatever consultants on these projects actually do. They seem to be there at every stage – especially the bit where they explain to the people who got it wrong how they got it wrong.
It reminds me of that ropey television series called Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed, where a masked magician would do the trick with much studio drama of lights and smoke machines, and then reveal the ruse, not that we needed to be told we were being fooled all along. It's a good hustle alright.
Doubling in cost
The easiest money to spend is dosh that’s not yours, which perhaps goes some way to explain why we can’t seem to put up a fence in this country without it doubling in cost.
Whether we like to admit it or not, neither frugalness nor accuracy are intrinsic to the Irish disposition. We are ostentatious to the point of ugliness. When we have it, by god we spend it. And if someone else has it, well then spend some more. It’s the public’s round, make sure you order doubles.
While we're used to Fianna Fáil governments acting like an out of control garden hose when it comes to spending, especially in recent memory, there is a perception – and it is just that, perception – that Nu-Fine Gael is meant to be the party of biznezz; all slick efficiency, prudence and private sector glam.
But how many of these Fine Gael top dogs have had significant careers in the real world? Despite the new school of Fine Gael adapting a seemingly novel stance, which is primary rooted in youth, many are career politicians when it comes down to it, having become local councillors in their 20s and onwards from there. Same as it ever was.
Can Harris weather the storm? Are there significant precedents otherwise? It was a news story that the report on where the hospital went wrong may actually hold individuals accountable, for god’s sake. Eoghan Murphy, for example, is still the Minister for Housing, a situation so surreally repetitive it has reached almost Beckettian levels at this stage. There’s that familiar theatre again.
Changing dates
The theatre of failure will continue to play. As each scene begins, the predictable details illuminate in the spotlight. We’ve seen this one before. The memos that disrupt the previously set-in-stone timeline, the emails from one entity trying to cover themselves to another. The changing dates, and “actually what happened was”, the exposition and plot revisions.
Hiring PwC to spell out what went wrong with the hospital is a thumb in the dyke for now, but the children’s hospital and the nurses’ strike are a confluence, tributaries of the same river about to burst its banks.
Fianna Fáil TD Thomas Byrne put it best when he called the Taoiseach’s statement on Harris “the dreaded vote of confidence”, not that he can talk because god knows what Fine Gael would actually have to do to get Micheál Martin to do a Popeye: “that’s all I can stands! I can’t stands no more!” For now, for him, more Beckett comes to mind: “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”
The strike and the hospital are, of course, different things, but neither Harris, nor Varadkar nor Paschal Donohoe nor any of the rest of them can say with a straight face that denying nurses a raise is fundamentally about what is affordable for the taxpayer when so much money is being thrown into the wind for this single hospital project.
And as is quite common these days, the review of the Government’s performance is once again on the streets as a population continues to vote with its feet.
