OPINION:Ireland's democracy is bogged down in amoral localism. The culture of selfishness must end
THE EMINENT European political scientist from Sligo, the late Peter Mair, asked at this year’s MacGill Summer School in Glenties: “Why did we have such bad governments? Whose fault is it?”
The simple answer, he said, was that it was our fault. His contribution, three weeks before his untimely death, is included in the summer school proceedings published under the title Transforming Ireland 2011-2016and which will be discussed at a forum in Dublin this morning. His analysis should be required reading for all involved in public life, most of them talented, well-meaning, idealistic men and women. However, they are encumbered with a political system that has massively contributed, not only to this crisis but to previous ones and to the fact that we have never had an administration fit for purpose.
As Enda Kenny said in Glenties in 2009: “We cannot fix our economy or create a just society unless and until we also fix our politics.”
Garret FitzGerald gave vent to his frustration and anger last year when, officially opening the MacGill school, he railed against a political system and politicians of all parties who had allowed, since the beginning of the decade, our economy to be driven on to the rocks. As far as the former taoiseach was concerned, unless we radically transform our political system in order to ensure an adequate level of future governance, we will deserve to remain a failed state.
Top of our agenda of reform has to be the way in which we elect our public representatives. We are the only country in the world, apart from Malta with its small population, to have the single transferable vote system with multiseat constituencies. This system is cumbersome, inefficient and wasteful and is costing us far too much with the salaries and expenses of 166 deputies in the Dáil, not to mention their staff in the constituencies.
More seriously, this system has produced excessive – or, as Mair referred to it, amoral – localism which, in turn, is producing dysfunctional government and administration and an unhealthy political culture of clientelism, and selfishness, in the electorate.
It is almost certain that more time and energy are spent on rivalry within political parties at constituency level than is spent on administration of the country in the interests of all.
Ministers are obliged to spend almost as much time in their constituencies as they do in their government offices and the system of the so-called clinics is from another age. Our political system has been condemned in Glenties by former ministers such as Gemma Hussey and Noel Dempsey who tried to reform it by ending the national-local dual mandate and paying local councillors salaries and expenses to manage local affairs and deal with constituents’ day-to-day problems. This initiative, as Dempsey recognises, has failed.
A parallel priority has to be the development of a system of administration which is fit for purpose. We have witnessed a litany of fundamental flaws in administration – from serious regulatory deficits to accounting errors of unacceptable magnitude in our public finances. We have created a service model for health, education, social welfare and pensions which the 1.5 million people at work cannot afford to fund.
It is essential that a radical transformation of our society remains a priority and that we build a healthy, modern, caring democracy by the anniversary of 1916. Our economy is going to have to take precedence in the immediate future, but we simply cannot afford to put the change agenda on the back burner.
We have many talented men and women in government and in all of the political parties but our present political system does not allow for that talent to be unleashed or fully exploited in the interest of good governance.
The MacGill school, now 31 years of age, has been dealing with the grave crisis in which we find ourselves for the past three years in what I hope has been a characteristically frank, open and non-partisan way. The messages about our economy coming from Glenties continue to be very clear and are well-known, although it would seem that they are in danger of being forgotten, perhaps conveniently, by some people.
One key fact is that, on top of our massive debt, we are still borrowing to fund the shortfall between day-to-day spending and tax revenue. We have to find ways of keeping the services of our country functioning with less money. The budget appears to have satisfied the troika but we still face difficult choices about how this country is administered and how we pull out of this mess. It was caused, not by Angela Merkel or Nicolas Sarkozy, but by Irish institutions and Irish citizens.
It was our institutions which allowed the banks to go criminally insane and it was our political system which allowed wages, salaries, professional fees, pensions and the number of State-funded quangos to soar considerably above what they are in wealthier EU member states. As Brigid Laffan asked at Glenties: “On what basis should medical consultants in Ireland be the highest-paid medical professionals across 30 countries?”
As Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has pointed out, between 2001 and 2010, spending in this department increased by 266 per cent, while inflation was 30 per cent. Examples such as these are to be found throughout our public and private services. It may have been grand when we thought we could afford such generosity – but now we can’t.
Some steps have been taken by this Government towards reform and fairness but there is obviously a lot more to do, especially when one looks at the state of the euro zone and the possibility that, while things are bad, they could actually get worse. No elite or pressure group should be allowed to react like Pavlovian dogs at the slightest mention of reform or transformation, or stand in the way of efforts to restore our economy. This has to be something like a national crusade.
Joe Mulholland is director of the MacGill Summer School which takes place in Glenties every year