Very occasionally, my friend Jason and I toss around the idea of writing a script for a satirical comedy series based on Irish politics. Those plans, sadly, will have to go in the bin now – because there’s no satire, if we’re honest with ourselves, that can top this from Fine Gael TD Emer Higgins:
https://twitter.com/EmerHigginsTD/status/1529180214512734209
Why bother making the service better, asked one twitter commenter, when you can just re-name it and lower expectations for it instead? Quite. Perhaps for her next trick, Emer Higgins might consider re-naming the Health Service. After all, “service” is an entirely misleading word there, especially if you’re waiting for cataract surgery.
There are levels to this, by the way, beyond the obvious point that celebrating a service having its name changed to reflect that it is no good is an interesting use of time for a Government TD:
Question one: What is she doing getting involved in Post Office marketing at all? An Post is a company – a state owned company, but still – trying to make money. If it is marketing “passport express” as “passport express”, it is doing so for commercial reasons. Lots of companies market things that don’t necessarily deliver. Is Emer Higgins going to be knocking on the door of certain phone and internet companies to talk about the definition of “superfast broadband”?
Nor is it even clear that the lack of an “express” service on passport express is An Post’s problem. All they do, at the end of the day, is convey an application form to the passport office, and the passport office’s reply back to the applicant. Using express post (as, it happens, I often do) means that An Post’s end of the bargain can be filled in three days. The rest of the delay clearly falls on the passport office.
Question two: In what way, shape, or form, does this achievement make life even the teensiest bit more bearable for a single one of Deputy Higgins constituents? Or anybody else, for that matter? Most politicians, when they chase publicity, do it with some kind of end goal in sight that at least some people can approve of. Think, for a moment, of former Senator Catherine Noone, a past master at generating silly season headlines. When she called, for example, for banning ice cream vans from playing music so as not to attract the attention of children, there was at least some faint causal link between her idea and childhood obesity. You could make some sort of a case there at maybe we’d have fewer fat kids.
What’s the benefit here? Everyone still gets their passport at the same pace, regardless of what the name of the service is.
Question three: If there is any benefit at all, then surely it is that Emer Higgins has uncovered a new role for honesty in the naming and branding of public services. Can we extend that? Perhaps Government should re-name all services which don’t work.
The Gardai, for example, have a name which in English means “guardians of the peace”. But they’re not, really, are they? Look no further than the fracas in Dublin Airport on Tuesday, or the state of affairs in Dublin’s inner city most nights of the week. Perhaps they should be rebranded as “People who solve most murders, and carry out traffic checks”.
Or perhaps, this is all just very silly. It is for the voters of Dublin Mid West to decide who their TDs are, but Deputy Higgins is fast building a reputation for silliness. Who can forget, after all, the video she posted during lockdown, wherein she was frantically hunting for the location of a secret rave? The second coming of Edmund Burke she is not, as parliamentarians go.
“To think that people might end up going to an organised, ticketed event is just absolutely outrageous.” @EmerHigginsTD is calling for all social media companies to remove all content related to the illegal St. Patrick’s Day rave. pic.twitter.com/FIbYzdoQP0
— Fine Gael (@FineGael) February 19, 2021