It gives me no great pleasure to have to report that our Taoiseach has just recently made a holy show of us in front of the neighbours. It appears to have passed totally unnoticed on this side of the Irish Sea. In the UK, however, it was in full public view, writes Mary Raftery
You may remember the unusually robust attack mounted by Bertie Ahern last month on British prime minister Tony Blair over the latter's criticism of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (Cap). Delivered by the Taoiseach in a speech at an agriculture fair in Kilkenny, it was followed up by a detailed press release.
However, not content with a mere domestic audience for his aggressive defence of the Cap, our leader upped the ante, and on September 26th he penned an article in the rarefied pink pages of the Financial Times, which was an edited version of his Kilkenny speech.
The only problem was that some of the crucial figures used by the Taoiseach to support his attack on Tony Blair were wrong. And not just a little bit wrong either. They were wildly inaccurate.
This was pointed out in a letter published in the Financial Times three days later from Stevan Tangermann, director for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries at the OECD, the highly-respected organisation of developed countries of which Ireland is a member.
To bolster his defence of the Cap, Bertie Ahern had produced figures to show that EU subsidy of farmers is not significantly different from similar state support in the US. His thrust was that Cap provisions in Europe are perfectly in line with elsewhere in the developed world.
Emphasising the relevance of this comparison, the Taoiseach stated in his article that according to the OECD, "transfers to agriculture from both consumers and taxpayers amount to $103 billion (£58 billion) in the EU and $92 billion in the US, or 1.32 per cent of gross domestic product for the EU and 0.92 per cent for the US." This, he wrote, showed a "broad comparability of support".
However, the OECD never said any such thing. The correct figures actually show the opposite - that EU support of farmers under the Cap substantially exceeds subsidies in the US.
Their figures, for the record and as enunciated with devastating clarity in their letter to the Financial Times, are as follows: "transfers to agriculture in the European Union (15 members) were larger than indicated in the [ Taoiseach's] article, namely $132 billion (€117 billion) in 2003, corresponding to 1.26 per cent of GDP."
The US figure used by the Taoiseach of $92 billion is, in fact, equivalent to 0.84 per cent of GDP, not 0.92 per cent as he had stated.
These figures, however, include all transfers from the state to the agriculture sector, including provision for research and such elements as food stamps in the US.
The more important figure when comparing state subsidy of agriculture in the EU and the US is that of direct farmer support. Here the divergence is even more stark: again as pointed out in the OECD letter to the Financial Times, farmers in the EU received in 2003 direct payments of $118 billion (€104 billion) or 36 per cent of farm receipts. In the USA, farmers received only $36 billion or 15 per cent of farm receipts.
It is bad enough that the Taoiseach should have misled the Irish people by using figures which the OECD, with infinite tact, has described as "not exact". That he should then use the same inaccurate statistics to convince the British public of the righteousness of his attack on their prime minister is even worse.
The humiliating rap on the knuckles he has received at the hands of the OECD for getting his sums wrong is entirely appropriate.
It should encourage everyone to interrogate his entire premise for supporting measures to subsidise farmers which are becoming increasingly discredited.
Of course, it does have to be pointed out that no one in Ireland appears to have noticed the Taoiseach's glaring misuse of figures. But then none of us has the benefit of an enormous staff of personal advisers, no fewer than eight of them in the Taoiseach's department, costing the taxpayer almost €1 million.
With our current concentration on accountability and value for money, it is reasonable to ask how a Taoiseach so powerfully endowed with helpers could have exposed this country internationally to such public embarrassment?
I put all of this to the Taoiseach's department yesterday. They told me that the figures used by Bertie Ahern dated from the year 2000, that nothing much has changed, and that they do not accept that they were wrong.
So that's alright then. Everyone's out of step but our Bertie. If he decides to use figures that are a full five years out of date, well so what? How dare the OECD or anyone else question him.
It of course remains a total mystery as to why he ignored the most recent figures. One wonders just who does he think he is fooling?