The backing track that accompanies politics these days is a soft scratching noise. It is the sound of boxes being ticked as the Government works its way through a list of populist measures designed to buttress its sagging support, writes Fintan O'Toole.
One-off houses in rural Ireland and the designation of An Taisce as the Spawn of Satan - tick. Playing the race card - tick. Pulling back from the Hanly Report by pretending that every local hospital is going to get everything - tick. Finding a new form of local patronage through a massive decentralisation programme - tick.
All of these boxes contain woeful consequences in the medium term, but who cares so long as they tickle the fancy of key constituencies over the next three years? Oddly enough, the one that is going to create the biggest disaster is the one that has attracted least controversy: decentralisation. Taking civil and public service jobs out of an overcrowded capital and putting them into apparently underdeveloped towns is a nice, cuddly notion. As a general principle no one really disagrees with it. I have to confess that I paid little attention to it myself until a few weeks ago when the Government-appointed Implementation Group issued its first report.
Since its terms of reference were about how, not whether, Charlie McCreevy's grand plan is to be put into practice, it is a relentlessly upbeat and reassuring document. Yet anyone reading it with some sense of the way this place actually works can see the makings of the scandals, inquiries, reports and investigations of 2010.
What becomes clear when you read the report is that this is a classic Fianna Fáil operation, in that it appeals vaguely to a broad swathe of the population and sharply to an insider elite.
The plain people of the provinces will see it as a great benefit screwed out of the Dublin 4 establishment by their local chieftains. At the same time there will be a huge bonanza for the real establishment, including the little inner circle of property developers that has a special place in the Government's heart.
The first thing that needs to be questioned is the whole notion that the civil and public services are at the moment terribly Dublin-centred. Dublin and its hinterland accounts for 40 per cent of the State's population. The proportion of civil and public servants working in the Dublin area is unknown (itself a mark of how badly thought-through this is) but it's probably about 45 per cent.
The best estimates suggest that 14,000 civil servants and about 130,000 public servants (teachers, gardaí, health board employees, local authority workers, etc.) are now employed outside of the Dublin region. If there is a geographical imbalance, it is slight. If the McCreevy proposals are implemented, however, there will be a serious imbalance the other way.
This is therefore rather like the farcical e-voting proposals: a complex and expensive solution to a problem that does not exist. But it will create a whole new set of problems.
Anyone who has lived here for the last few decades knows that one of the deepest problems is the lack of joined-up thinking in public policy. The fragmentation of authority - in, for example, the health service - is one the reasons why the State has been incapable of getting anything done.
The fact that 41 of the 53 new locations are not listed in the National Spatial Strategy as focal points for development is a symptom of the ludicrous inability to co-ordinate policies. The solution? Fragment things even more. Have your civil servants clocking up mileage allowances travelling between BIM in Cavan and the Department of the Marine in Clonakilty, Garda HQ in Thurles and Justice in Dublin, or Bus Éireann in Mitchelstown and the Department of Transport in Dublin. Have eight Ministers and their advisers working many miles away from the Dáil.
But it makes perfect sense if you remember the Government's deep and abiding affection for the property development industry. When you read the Implementation Report the outlines of the great gold rush appear. The scope for private enrichment is massive.
A flood of office buildings in prime Dublin locations will come onto the market within the same timeframe, making for knock-down prices. The new offices for eight Government departments and the OPW will be designed, built, financed and operated by private companies, some of whom will receive in return current State buildings in Dublin.
All State data processing will be done in two new centres owned and operated privately. This astonishing notion raises its own fears, especially since reassurances that security will be watertight will come from the Government that brought us the e-voting debacle.
The banks will make big profits from financing these operations. The developers will pass on these costs to the taxpayer and will receive, in return, guaranteed State tenants who can't move out for political reasons.
There will of course be "an open tendering process, consistent with national and EU procurement rules" just like there was in that other great McCreevy project at Punchestown. Ask the old question cui bono - who benefits? - and the whole thing starts to make sense.