Nine hundred million euro is a lot of money. It is, for most of us, almost impossible to imagine, writes Fintan O'Toole.
It floats out there in a kind of hyper-reality, like black holes or quarks or parallel universes. We know they must exist because the people who know about such things tell us so.
Thus, when the Minister for Finance tells us in a budget, as Brian Cowen did last week, that he is creating "a special disability multiannual funding package with a total value of close to €900 million over the years 2006 to 2009", it is easy to be impressed. Even spread over four years, €900 million is an awe-inspiring sum.
In the context of a budget that has been hyped as evidence of a new caring left-wing approach by the Government, it looks like a decisive commitment to providing a real bridge into full citizenship for people who have been disgracefully neglected throughout the history of the State.
And in some ways, it is. The very fact that the Minister for Finance would make disability an issue on Budget day is welcome. The explicit promise that Brian Cowen has made to end the scandal of people with autism and other intellectual disabilities being incarcerated in mental hospitals will, if fulfilled, remove one burden of shame from the State.
As it happened, though, the figure of €900 million also emerged in a different context last week. The small print of the Budget documents revealed that €900 million is also to be allocated over four years for the cost of purchasing new offices for civil servants. This is not because civil servants don't have perfectly serviceable offices at the moment. It's because of an exercise in stroke politics that is already unravelling: Charlie McCreevy's top-of-the-head announcement in last year's budget that 10,500 civil and public servants were to be transferred out of Dublin.
This second €900 million is a truly stunning figure. A few weeks ago, Tom Parlon, who is in charge of the decentralisation programme, told an Oireachtas committee that the cost of new offices for 10,500 civil servants would be €815 million. Between that announcement and the Budget we learned that in fact only 3,500 civil servants would be decentralised. By rights, the cost of relocating 3,500 workers should be about a third of relocating 10,500 - around €275 million.
Instead, it's gone up. Maths were never my strong point, but even I can figure out that the projected cost of this policy has risen, on a pro rata basis, by €620 million in a matter of weeks. Even if you think the decentralisation programme is a good idea (and I don't), you have to be amazed at the ability of the Department of Finance to conjure up €620 million from nowhere just because it's for one of the Government's pet political projects.
And this is the point. If I were to write here that the extra €900 million allocated to disability services is inadequate and should be doubled, I'd be written off as a silly and irresponsible fantasist, peddling policies that would bankrupt the Exchequer.
Yet another €900 million is almost certainly needed to meet the basic needs of people with disabilities. The National Intellectual Disability Database compiled by the Health Research Board, and published in the run-up to the Budget, showed a need for 1,893 residential places, 347 day places, and 1,763 respite and other support services to be provided by 2009.
As the HRB pointed out, the new places announced for 2005 mean that "only a small proportion of the existing and emerging need in this area will be addressed". Why is it a more urgent priority to move civil servants than it is to provide these vulnerable citizens with the services they and their families need? Could it be, by any chance, that projects that suit a political agenda and/or provide opportunities for vast profits for private interests escape scrutiny while those that simply give a decent life to people who depend on the State have to scrap for every cent?
Look, for example, at the Government's determination to press ahead with the much-needed programme of building primary schools through the already discredited Public Private Partnership (PPP) system. Early this year, the Comptroller and Auditor General studied a pilot PPP scheme through which the British firm Jarvis was contracted to build five primary schools. He found "the projected cost of the final PPP deal was 8 per cent to 13 per cent higher than the projected cost of procuring and running the schools using the conventional approach".
What's the Government's response? More PPPs, more wasted taxpayers' money, and more profits for private businesses. And don't even ask about the massive road-building programme, where the cost to the Exchequer has gone from an estimate of €5.6 billion in 1999, to €7 billion, to €15.8 billion, to the C&AG's estimate at the end of 2003 of €16.4 billion.
When Exchequer spending carries with it a bonanza for builders, developers and financiers, there is no problem finding the money and no need for stringent controls. If only someone could find a way of making a profit out of them, people with disabilities could sit back and watch the money roll in.