Where are the safeguards for the public interest in the public-privatepartnership process, asks Martin Kay.
In mid-April, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, launched the Public Private Partnership (PPP) Communications Strategy. It is interesting to note that Mr McCreevy has always been completely consistent in his enthusiasm for PPP, while the Tánaiste, Ms Harney, speaking at the Progressive Democrats' conference, hinted a change of mind about a model that has come from Britain.
Now Fintan O'Toole and Frank McDonald are fretting. Whether their reservations extend beyond this troublesome method of procurement to issues of morals and ethics is not clear. But that is where the substantive issue lies.
The story begins with privatisation, the model also from Britain, a fortuitous development which fitted nicely with Margaret Thatcher's "small town grocer" view of economics. It fuelled William Waldegrave's belief in the market as an arbiter of choice and, crucially therefore, also of moral norms.
In Britain, "contracting out" rapidly grew into "market testing" and then the Private Finance Initiative. Next, the era of Public Private Partnership arrived. New Labour diehards were profoundly suspicious of unchecked private involvement in the public sphere, especially in cherished socialist icons such as the National Health Service. There was a brief cultural struggle until, within a few months of gaining power in 1997, New Labour roundly endorsed privatisation and PPP as consistent with "third-way" thinking. This encouraged parallel reforms which actually consolidated power in the centre, while devolving responsibility for delivery to people (and this was the best part of the plan) who even produced the money to bring about delivery in the first place.
In Ireland, privatisation did not merge so smoothly with PPP. The reason was probably because of the absence of a market tradition (we are not a "nation of shopkeepers"), together with such an awful economic situation that corporatism was the only way to deal with the problem. (In Britain, corporatism was the problem.) Irish society, therefore, was presented with privatisation, pure and simple.
Notwithstanding objections, within a few years, more than half of State-owned enterprise was sold. Objections began to fade for a number of reasons: the gradual erosion of the functionalist organisation of the State; coincidence with a successful Programme for National Recovery; a general Celtic Tigerish feeling that throwing out dinosaurs was the right thing to do; personal enrichment (through employee share ownership options and speculation-in-the-margins); and the illusion that social partnership, which so successfully brought about a reversal of national fortunes in the first place, was now the guardian of that which church and family once assured.
Those who might object (broadly, the unions and the "social pillar") were quite happy with the way things were going. The one was increasingly comfortable at the top table of social partnership. The other was satisfied by attending it and waiting for such crumbs to fall as the National Anti-Poverty Strategy and White Papers like Supporting the Voluntary Sector.
The persistently corporatist nature of social partnership and the power retained by the State are clear. Thus, the tactics needed by government, to ensure that the privatisation programme proceeds without hitch and keeps feeding money into the pressurised Exchequer, consist in continuing to satisfy those at the table and to drop more crumbs for those invited in when convenient. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that there will be no objections to privatisation if that process can be maintained. This represents preoccupation with ends over means - and those who now superintend the ethics of national management and prosperity (the social partnership) have no difficulty with it.
Inevitably, social partnership is compromised as a result. Arguably, we always suspected that something may have been a little dodgy but that unease was dispelled by the results it produced. Unfortunately, the results are not now being produced. If anything, people are beginning to realise that the economy is under-performing (for structural reasons). Furthermore, the only analysis to date indicates that privatising state companies in Ireland has not improved their performance (e.g., Irish Steel, Eircom, Greencore).
In the meantime, driven by a commendable desire to address structural deficits, one of the most influential partners in social partnership, IBEC, has agitated increasingly for PPP. And because the potential objectors to privatisation have been so pleasantly surprised by their first taste of this sort of thing, they have fallen into line where PPP is concerned. The communications strategy is the result.
This produces a curious mix of issues. In Britain, where the infrastructure is advanced, the transition from privatisation to PPP was seamless. In Ireland, where the infrastructure is poor, the transition was not seamless. Our concerns, in the few places they have been expressed, have been about the process's disregard of public interest.
In Britain, the problems have been largely dealt with by an efficient privatisation and PPP "policing and advisory force" (Partnerships UK). In Ireland, however, the process is protected from impeachment because the "policing force" is social partnership itself. Yet, in the brief lacuna between privatisation and PPP, the culture of social partnership could be seen for what it was.
It is a matter for profound concern that the two mechanisms which might safeguard the remaining shreds of public interest are themselves under pressure.The clutch of anti-corruption tribunals is being priced out of existence as increasingly unaffordable options. And the Freedom of Information Act is weakened by a widening of the range of documents to be protected, by the fencing-off of current leadership exchanges, and by the uncertainties of the question and answer process in the Oireachtas.
Where does accountability lie now? By what values do governance mechanisms in the nature of social partnership reach their conclusions? Are these values actually those of the Irish nation or are they protected by some privileged, biased discourse to which ordinary people are just not privy?
Until we have answers to questions like these, a new Communications Strategy sounds a bit like propaganda. Social partnership has displayed no sense of stewardship for what has been sold or is to be mortgaged. It sounds as if Coalition Government may not do so either.