We are now embarked upon the longest election campaign in history. There are about five months to go to polling day and four months to the formal start of the campaign.
Every party is offering to go into coalition with every other party - with the notable exception of Sinn Féin. Big-name candidates are bartering for seats in State cars and, if lucky, State-owned aircraft. Manifestos are being polished. That old unseemly game of Dutch-auction politics, which served this State so badly for a period in the late 1970s and early 1980s, has opened. The bidding for votes with taxpayers' own money has begun.
The promises are being rolled out at the rate of four in the past week. The first Cabinet meeting of 2002 produced two. The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, announced that 709 acute hospital beds would be commissioned in public hospitals by the end of this year. That figure is 259 beds more than promised in the Government's Health Strategy late last year. The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, announced the beginning of the tendering process for the first line of the Dublin Metro which is be built by 2007. She dressed up the 18 months-old decision in new election clothes.What stopped these Ministers from providing these services over the last five years?
The promise to beat all was made by the Fine Gael leader, Mr Noonan, on Sunday when he said that tax credits would be offered to 400,000 taxpayers to recoup 20 per cent of their losses on Eircom shares. It is a daft notion. More than that, it is indefensible to ask the general body of taxpayers to pay for the gambling instincts of those who exercised their own free-will to splurge. It may appeal to the base instincts of aggrieved individuals but there are greater sectional injustices in society which could benefit from a €90 million give-away? The Taoiseach entered promise-land with his announcement that every school building should be surveyed over the next two years and a "guaranteed standard" for each should be put in place. Where did sub-standard schools stand with the Celtic Tiger for almost five years?
The leader of the Labour Party, Mr Quinn, made a wise intervention in the electioneering frenzy yesterday when he called on all parties to put a halt to auction politics. He wanted the Irish people to have a sane and sensible debate on what the next coalition government should do. The voters were entitled to hear the manifestos of the political parties, properly costed, he said, so that they could make up their own minds on what kind of society they wanted for the next five years. Mr Quinn is right. There are almost five months to go to the election. The public should not have to put up with four promises a week from now to polling day. The drip-feed of goodies from government and opposition parties demeans politics and alienates voters. Have no lessons been learnt the hard way from the past? The public needs option-politics, not auction-politics, before they cast their vote.