Eoin Ó Broin’s statement that the Department of Finance chief economist should be sacked was the worst of all things in politics, a mistake. The mistake is not that he misspoke, though he did. The remark betrayed a mistaken view of where power lies, and how it is used.
Ó Broin’s verbal assault on John McCarthy, an able chief economist, and his subsequent walk-back on his original remarks, was unintentionally rude. It highlighted – notwithstanding the grandeur of his title – that McCarty is routinely ignored regardless. Firing people is a crude use of power. The more effective process is to ignore them, preferably by praising them, and then carrying on regardless.
It was a further mistake because it was a departure from an assiduous project of socialising Sinn Féin for power. From the boardrooms of Silicon Valley to the executive suites of business at home, the party is being introduced. Senior people on both sides are now on first-name terms. It is top-down economics in that it reassures the party’s growing middle-class support that it is present in the places they aspire to be. Sinn Féin has arrived. Whether it is in office after the next election is not the point. Business has accepted it as a party of government. Fumbling in the greasy till is the inevitable aftermath of every Irish revolution.
But before Sinn Féin began its march to the centre, it entwined itself in the structures of the State. That crystallised in Ruairí Ó Brádaigh’s replacement by the newly elected MP for West Belfast Gerry Adams as president of Sinn Féin at their ardfheis this month, 39 years ago.
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Terms of engagement
At first secret and then open, relations between our elected government and its civil servants with the party have been a pillar of Irish politics since. The terms of engagement were transformed by the Belfast Agreement and the subsequent electoral success of Sinn Féin. What was almost constant was the courtesy of the party to the Civil Service.
Sinn Féin has a justified reputation for being methodically prepared for meetings, matching officials for notetaking, and outdoing them in the thoroughness and alacrity of responses. Ó Broin is an exemplar of the sort. His political mistake, on the eve of Sinn Féin’s ardfheis next weekend, is a crystallisation of several things together, as one disturbing current that chimes with deep-seated concerns about the party. Change could be transformed into fear of a party that would fire civil servants it disagrees with, that does routinely legally maul anyone who dares challenge it in the media, and will freeze contact with the same media, if their storyline on Sinn Féin is not going to plan.
The danger for Sinn Féin is that it has everything to lose, and two years to do so. It had an unexpected electoral setback in 2007. It had an annus horribilis in 2019. It owes much to the ineptitude of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for the strength of its current position. The management of its own catharsis into a new establishment requires careful choreography. Missteps cannot be allowed.
Misunderstanding of power
But these are tactical issues. The strategic takeaway from Ó Broin’s remarks is his misunderstanding of power, where it lies and how it is exercised. His venting was based not just on an exaggerated sense of the chief economist’s importance but an overestimation of the power of agency of the Civil Service generally. What will ultimately disable Sinn Féin’s credentials as a party of change is not its colonising of the centre, it is its failure to reform the administrative State. This is an issue on which it has almost nothing to say.
It is boring underneath the bonnet stuff and almost nobody is interested. Briefly considered by the trioka, it was swiftly abandoned after their departure. There is an amusing press release on the website of the misnamed Department of Public Service and Reform. Dated June 11th, 2014, and titled “Public Service Transformation” it marked the end, not the beginning of change. The report of the Independent Panel on Strengthening Civil Service Accountability and Performance provoked intense opposition among senior officials. Its key recommendation of a permanent head of the Civil Service has never been acted on. The Ministers and Secretaries Act 1924, which shrouds administrative responsibility in opacity, remains almost undisturbed.
Ó Broin rightly says that housing is the key political issue. He is familiar with the National Oversight and Audit Commission. Announced in July 2014, it is an ineffective imitation of what was intended to effectively hold local government to account. The point is that should he become minister for housing, he will inherit the same lack of administrative capacity that haunts this government politically. In health, the lack of effective agency by the parent department over the administrative apparatus of the Health Service Executive has deepened. The irony, and it would not be lost on the chief economist, is that civil servants need to be both empowered and better held to account.
Administrative stasis is a symptom of the lack of political leadership, not its cause. The State Sinn Féin wants to change is one where metaphorically old ways cannot die and new ones cannot be born. The lack of understanding of the cause of the impasse and makes politics an agent of continuity, not change. That should concern Sinn Féin.