Imagine if Roy Keane and Alex Ferguson were women – women who had been highly successful in some entertainment sphere and were now in the 10th year of what the media would undoubtedly characterise as a catfight (because male cats never fight).
How would the reaction to all the “snidey” point-scoring in their bookselling blitzes differ from that accorded to the men? On what planet would one of them be invited to speak at the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, to spout such banalities as “I believe to succeed in management you need energy, inspiration, personality, decision-making and ability to adapt to change?”, while the other – yet to prove himself as a manager – is guest of honour at the Irish Management Institute, advising the managers: “You threaten some people, you praise others. But you can’t be relying on other people. It’s got to come from within”? Oprahspeak hardly covers it.
If this is what it takes to fire up Irish managers , emergency legislation must be enacted before teatime, mandating a quota system of 60/40 in favour of women at top levels of business and politics.
Rebel figure
That done, the only question worth dwelling on is why Keane and Ferguson claimed so much attention. A below-the-line comment poster, Old Codger (it’s how he rolls), had a go: “Keane is the rebel we would all like to be ... He is our secret selves out there storming the barricades. We need him to show ourselves just how debased we really are ... ”
So Keano sticks it to The Man. Interminably. Yet The Man wins, hands down – the knighthood, the statues and the stand-naming. But maybe that’s the point. Perhaps Keane has become a kind of avatar for an angry, impotent, confused electorate, one trying to play handball against a haystack, as Joe Higgins once described attempts to question Bertie Ahern.
In that light, Keane’s iconisation makes sense. So last week’s byelections in Dublin South West and Roscommon-South Leitrim, perfect microcosms of working-class urban and rural Ireland, had voters queuing round the block, surely? Not. Almost two out of three of the Dublin electorate didn’t bother. In the west, it was nearly half.
Paul Murphy was still 2,500 votes off the quota when elected to the national parliament, even after a brilliant campaign that focused entirely on a single, easily understood issue: the water charges. The “It’s the water, stupid” strategy should have been no surprise to anyone; his European Parliament campaign had the city centre plastered with massive banners on the same theme.
Meanwhile, Irish Water’s gifts to his campaign left some people speculating whether he had a mole genius operating within the utility. How else to explain such timely events as the arrival of the troublesome welcome packs, followed by last week’s extraordinary attempt to deny that its “performance-related reward scheme” is an actual bonus scheme?
The “bonus” word is incendiary; at least the people in IW knew that much. But instead of scrapping the scheme, they hit on the wheeze of using four words to disguise it. It seems that no one in this highly controversial new quango, one operating in the full beam of a frugal new era, considered the optics, never mind the merits, of recruiting staff that had to be induced, apparently, to go the extra mile.
Where did those managers come from – the Premier League? Where did they get the idea that start-ups should pay bonuses? How many employees in well-established private companies are doing two jobs on top of their own, companies where paid overtime is gone but overtime remains?
As information trickles out about its set-up costs (€150 million over budget) and PR – €550,000 for its first 13 months, a figure extracted by the Sunday Times with difficulty – Irish Water has done something impressive; it has managed to alienate everyone.
Gold-plated
At one end, are the industrial development bodies – the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Forfás – openly concerned about the creation of “a gold-plated” infrastructure that would push up the price of water and reduce competitiveness.At the other, are the many who accept the conservation argument for charges but who participated in last Saturday’s stunningly successful Right2Water march simply to vent about Irish Water. Among them, more numerous than we imagine, are those who for the sake of sanity had managed to park their rage against the testosterone-fuelled stags of the crash and were trying to move on. No Roy Keane they, doomed to play handball against a haystack for a decade, for surely valuable lessons had been learned? Irish Water will probably get it right in the end, if only because serious journalists will hold it to account. But in the meantime, what will we have lost? The two out of three who failed to vote in Dublin South West may be an omen.