Yesterday, the Government delivered a budget which provided a little bit for everybody, and a solution for nothing. Families suffering from higher energy bills get a fiver a week. Students get cheaper public transport and a few euro a week if they qualify for a grant. Female students got free contraception. The programme for building new homebuilding got a few hundred million. Smokers and drivers got walloped. All in all, the plan was simple: Toss a little bit at every problem, and fix none. It speaks to the fundamental problem with this Government, which is a lack of vision.
“Never has so much been spent to achieve so little”, said Pearse Doherty, responding to it. It is very hard to argue that he is wrong.
The Government will spend, next year, some €87billion. Most of it will be taken from people in the form of taxes, but a substantial chunk will be borrowed, and will have to be paid back. With that €87billion, ask yourself, what does the Government plan to do to fix any of the major problems in the country?
Is, for example, extending a reduction in public transport prices for young people (probably the most widely praised measure in the budget) really going to make much of a difference to the country? Could that money be more effectively directed elsewhere? What about the free contraception, or the free GP care for 6 and 7 year old children? All of them, potentially, worthy things. But is there any national problem which gets fixed with that spending?
One of the big problems afflicting Ireland for most of the past decade, since the economic crash, has been a lack of any political vision, of any kind, on the big issues that Government policy can change. When Enda Kenny came to office in 2011, he had a once in a century opportunity to address the big problems in Ireland – a massive mandate, and a huge majority. His Government could have pushed through big reforms in healthcare (indeed, they came into office with a plan to do so, and then dropped it), housing, education, or anything else you might think of. That opportunity was not taken. Instead, for most of the past decade, Government has focused its major reforming energy on social matters: More zeal and effort was put into winning votes on marriage and abortion than it ever was on fixing housing or healthcare. Ireland has basically the same tax system today as it did 15 years ago. It has basically the same health and education systems. It is building barely any more houses than it was back then. The childcare problem has never been addressed. The student grant system remains the same.
Government does, to be sure, seem to have a passion for fixing the Climate, which, of course, it cannot do.
One of the things that makes Sinn Fein attractive to voters is that they talk about the big problems. Sinn Fein says it will fix housing. Now, they may, or may not. But Government does not even seem to pretend that it has a plan to fix housing.
Would the Government be better, or worse off, this morning, if it had said yesterday that it was offering no goodies to anybody – no fiver for fuel, no free GP care, no free contraception – and was, instead, taking every spare cent in the Government coffers and investing it in building housing, and, at the same time, was announcing a big planning reform measure to make house construction faster and easier? Would there be more, or less, of a sense of purpose and vision from our leaders?
Of course, such a plan might not work. It might end up a disaster, and the Government might lose the next election. But they are on course to lose that election anyway. At least, having a sense of vision and purpose (to cite Michael Noonan, circa 2002) might give them something to rally behind. What’s the message that they have from this budget? Vote for us, we gave you a fiver?
It won’t work. For one thing, the problem with budgets like this is that the losers feel the pain immediately, and by the time the winners see any benefits, the memory of who doled them out has gone. Smokers, drivers, and many others will feel the pain of this budget tomorrow. People who saw the eligibility time for the fuel allowance fall from 15 months to 12 will barely notice. By next week, nearly all of the 87 billion euros will have been forgotten. And people will still be angry about housing, and childcare, and crime, and waiting lists.
It was a budget that solved nothing. For either the country, or the Government.