It is public policy to confine all initiatives to ideas which have alreadybeen disastrous elsewhere, writes John Waters.
If there's any remaining mystery about why we lack creative ideas in public life, consider the experience of Mark FitzGerald, chief executive of Sherry FitzGerald estate agents, who last week proposed that people living in Dublin might be offered incentives to move to the country, thus freeing up city housing for the young. Because of how it was announced and received, his idea was dead before it hit the runway.
"Auctioneer wants elderly to leave Dublin," said the headline on the summary on the front page of The Irish Times [clarified the next day by the paper], invoking images of aged citizens being herded onto cattle trains and transported to Mayo. But Mr FitzGerald's proposal referred to anyone who might consider moving out of Dublin to rural areas, regardless of age. The summation of the story, here as elsewhere, lent a suggestion of compulsion to the idea, whereas the more detailed reports made clear that Mr FitzGerald had proposed incentivising a particular social policy objective. In an almost comic insight into the nature of Irish public thinking, an anonymous Department of the Environment spokesman was reported as being "baffled" by the idea, mainly because it had not been attempted abroad. Since it is public policy to confine all initiatives to ideas which have already been disastrous elsewhere, Mr FitzGerald was, obviously, wasting his breath.
Later in the day, the leader of the Seanad, Ms Mary O'Rourke, indulged in a spot of grandstanding on the issue in the Upper House, by which time the proposal was cutting deeper into the demographic pie-chart. Mr FitzGerald, she said, "made the proposal that all of us middle-aged get out of our houses and go to live somewhere far away and give the houses to people" .
Here, as elsewhere, we can observe how far the tabloid ethic has penetrated. What matters now about public discussion is not veracity to substance but instant exploitation of public sensation.
Mr FitzGerald's proposal was interesting, though flawed for reasons unexplored in the rush to despatch it as wrong-headed. He was addressing a problem: the shortage in Dublin of second-hand housing to meet increasing demand from young people. Providing incentives to relocate to the country would, he claimed, alleviate this problem and reduce inflation in the housing market. Mr FitzGerald is an experienced estate agent, and these views on worthy objectives deserve to be reported straightforwardly and taken seriously.
At the heart of the proposal was an interesting idea: that stamp duty be used creatively to encourage healthy trends in the property market. Mr FitzGerald was in essence proposing that, in certain circumstances, people who relocate be given grants equivalent to the stamp duty paid on the homes they have sold. He suggested this would be self-financing through increased market activity.
It is far from an insane or dangerous idea. Stamp duty on property, like many taxes, is an uncreative hog-levy which boosts the central Exchequer without thought as to its influence on behaviour.
Our public planning is a mess of irrationality, contradiction and waste, largely because many critical quality-of-living considerations, positive and negative, remain unquantified in our economic equations. Dublin is grossly overpopulated, resulting in widespread invisible, non-fiscal taxation. No attempt is made to quantify economically the cost of daily gridlock - extended commuting time, lost hours, missed appointments, etc.
THESE factors remain as unacknowledged forms of taxation on individuals and businesses also subject to a premium in other contexts for the "privilege" of operating in this environment. It should be possible to rebalance our economic equations by incorporating elements which, once visible, would influence choices for good. Consideration of where to live is just one such choice. Despite massive technological changes, the individual is still sucked towards the metropolis, because the economic conditions, visible and invisible, so dictate. Very often, that individual remains in the city more through inertia than active choice, because no incentive is available to prompt new thinking and because the true cost of inertia is not available to the relevant economic equations.
Mark FitzGerald's idea is half-baked, but its flaws relate to the absurdity of what it seeks to address rather than the spirit of its inspiration. He was careful to emphasise the proposal relates to people who have moved to Dublin from the country but maintained ties with their native counties. This, I expect, was to avoid running foul of local authorities which seek to discourage "outsiders". But since the logic of such diktats relates mainly to the distorting effects of windfall capital accrued in the lucrative Dublin market, it is clear that Mr FitzGerald's proposal would add to such concerns. Perhaps we need to study his idea in its broader context - of seeking to use tax revenues creatively to bring about desired ends. We need also to reflect on what the current tendency to play the man rather than the ball is doing to creativity in public discussion.