This week, the Government announced that it would be increasing the property tax, which, as you all know, goes to fund local government and county councils. Later today, Niamh and I will have duelling articles on whether increasing the property tax is a good idea. And, sods law being what it is, no sooner was my article defending the property tax finished, than a friendly source sent in this tender, just published by South Dublin County Council:
In the tender documents, we learn that the winning bidder will be able to avail of €24,000 per year for providing this service to South Dublin Council. To be fair, in the grand scheme of where taxpayer money goes, that is not an awful lot. But small amounts of absurd spending add up, and this, my friends, is absurd as it gets.
For one thing, this role is to “advise the cultural diversity steering group”, so it is money on top of money, unless we are to assume that members of the cultural diversity steering group are unpaid – which would be a first, in the Irish public sector. The role appears to be – going by the tender description, to advise the cultural diversity steering group about cultural diversity. Which sort of undermines the case for having a cultural diversity steering group to begin with. In fact, the tender document describes the role of the tender winner as:
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Support the development of the Steering Group, drafting a common statement of purpose and identifying local issues that we want to address in our collaboration. This might include creating a space for lateral dialogue and exchange.
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Work closely with local, regional and national partners to enhance resources and enrich practice.
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Devise and implement an effective communications strategy for the programme.
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Provide activity reports as required, review progress and plan next steps with the Cultural Diversity Steering Group.
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Co-ordinate the gathering of documentation of programme related initiatives.
In other words, the contract appears to be not for somebody to work with the Cultural Diversity Steering group, but for somebody to do their job for them. Up to and including handling all the paperwork.
But it is perhaps the second line in the tender advert that is most concerning: To provide development and support services to the Cultural Diversity Steering Group to ensure that cultural diversity and inclusion are embedded in cultural organisations supported by South Dublin County Council.
In public sector lingo, “supported by” the council means “funded by”. This is a contract to ensure that all of those funded by the council have “cultural diversity” embedded within them. What does that mean, exactly?
Well, nobody knows. It is not defined in the tender documents.
On the face of it, the idea seems to be to ensure that the council is reaching out to, and including, marginalised migrant communities in its work. That is presumably why the contract specifies that they would be interested in employing somebody with a migrant background, though using language carefully crafted to be non-discriminatory.
But is spending money to hire an advisor on cultural diversity in the arts really a good use of taxpayer money? At a time when property taxes have to increase to fund council services, and when many families – including migrant families – are homeless?
This smacks, like so much of what happens in Government, of people who have the luxury of spending other people’s money, and not worrying where it comes from.