In recent decades our society has shown a strikingly weak sense of the public interest
LAST YEAR, in terms of output and income per head, Ireland became the fifth-richest country in Europe, outmatched only by Luxembourg, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark. The present downturn may cause us to lose some ground this year and perhaps next year to countries like Belgium, Sweden and the United Kingdom. But, even then, our purchasing power per head is likely to remain almost 10 per cent higher than that of the rest of Western Europe.
By contrast, our public services remain far behind those of many less prosperous European neighbours. This depressing reality was borne in upon me by the following reports, all in The Irish Times of St Patrick's Day:
- Lack of social workers puts 650 foster children at risk;
- Complications linked to Galway outbreak: 36 per cent of State's public water supplies potentially risking public health;
- Irish people pessimistic on age care: 43 per cent believe nursing home care is below standard;
- Bishops call for alternatives to prison: the most non-rehabilitative environment one could imagine;
- No social or civic philosophy in society, ecumenical service told.
Why is it that, with a level of income higher than that of 22 of the 27 EU states, our public services fail to look after children in need or to care for the ill and the old; fail to make any serious attempt to rehabilitate our prisoners; and fail to ensure access to clean water - not to speak of failing to provide efficient competitive public transport, just to mention a few of our more obvious public service deficiencies?
After all, over the past half century our political leaders were remarkably successful in securing much faster economic growth than anywhere else in Europe, moving Ireland from the poorest of the dozen countries in the northern part of Western Europe to becoming one of the richest. Given this success, why have our governments failed so miserably to deploy the vast resources thus created in such a way as to give us the kind of public services we can clearly afford and desperately need?
One reason for this failure is certainly that during the past three decades many politicians have caved in to pressure from a minority of better-off people to maximise their private purchasing power by eliminating local taxation on households and also by giving massive tax exemptions to wealthy people seeking a high return from investment in construction.
These two anti-social processes have undermined the public interest through erosion of tax revenues in ways that did not happen during the first half-century of independence.
Next, while clearly some economic gains did accrue from social partnership in the 1990s, most notably in the form of the moderation of pay increases, the cosy relationship this created with two powerful vested interests, the trade unions and business, has worked to erode the public interest.
Trade unions have been allowed to deploy their influence to protect public monopolies, e.g. in transport and in utilities such as electricity, to the detriment of consumers, including union members outside the public sector.
The public interest has also suffered through prolonged failure to tackle interest groups in parts of the health service, including the medical and pharmaceutical professions, and also trade unions seeking to protect the employment of redundant health administrators.
Some of the consequences of this cosy consensus are frankly horrifying. Thus, the deal that health trade unions made several years ago with a timid government over the creation of the HSE has blocked the creation of a health system capable of saving lives by employing sufficient frontline staff to provide an efficient service.
Cuts are now being applied to frontline services everywhere, apparently in order to preserve the jobs of hundreds of superfluous administrators.
In a decent, democratic, caring society the disastrous anti-social deal with trade unions that this Government entered into when the HSE was being established would have led to such public outrage that those responsible would have long since been blown away. Instead, the public authorities responsible for this disgraceful situation have been allowed to get away with it.
Why has the Minister for Health waited until now to admit that the decision to retain all these redundant administrators in the health boards was a mistake? Why has she waited years before raising the issue of seeking redundancies - years of miserable cuts and unnecessary delays in treatment that have threatened the health, and inevitably, in some instances, the lives of thousands of patients?
In most democratic societies such protectionist tactics are from time to time challenged by one or other political party alternating in power - something that no longer happens here.
In Ireland, most of our political parties are feeding from the one trough - competing for the same vested interest votes, in this instance at the expense of the health and lives of our people. All have been equally afraid to challenge the misuse of resources involved in preventing the substitution of badly-needed frontline staff for redundant former administrators of grossly inefficient health boards.
What is quite striking about our society is the extraordinarily weak sense of any general public interest and the extreme passivity of public opinion in the face of maladministration by weak politicians.
The contrast between our new-found wealth and the pathetic inadequacy of this and other public services is frankly disgraceful. We deserve better from our system of government, which has a clear duty to so organise its affairs as to enable our citizens to benefit from the kind of health services that citizens of France and Sweden, to give but two examples, enjoy.