Plonk this down as exhibit A in the list of things that Government spends money on which are wasteful, unnecessary, and serve no purpose other than allow politicians boast that money was spent. No wonder Josepha Madigan is so excited:
Fantastic news today that my @FineGael colleague @SimonHarrisTD is announcing an additional €40m for higher education institutions for the upcoming academic year. @ucddublin will see over €3m for projects & initiatives.📚 pic.twitter.com/HsOC5md3zc
— Josepha Madigan ⚖️✨ (@josephamadigan) August 15, 2022
“Greener and More Accessible” is a single phrase, but it speaks to two very different concepts. Making universities and public buildings more accessible is, naturally, a good and useful thing. Being in a wheelchair, or being blind, or having any other disability should be, in so far as is possible, no barrier to living a full life as a member of a modern society. No reasonable person could really object to more wheelchair ramps, or making signs available in braile, or whatever the case may be.
But making our Universities “greener”? We’re talking here about a sector that produces a fraction of a per cent of Ireland’s total Carbon Emissions, which themselves comprise less than 1% of global carbon emissions. You could just abolish the Irish university sector in the morning, and the net effect on the global climate would be zero.
You might – at a push – argue that Universities are on the front lines of the “climate fight”. The argument there would go that we’ll never achieve sustainable green energies and new ways of living without the vital work of Irish scientists in Irish universities finding new ways to turn human excrement into a sustainable source of power generation, or whatever it is that they’re trying today. But this money isn’t really for that: It’s for a push to make the Universities themselves less polluting. Paying for the transition to paper straws in the canteen, that sort of thing.
More than that, though, it’s the usual: It’s the spending of money for the purpose of creating a record. This €40m will go with the other millions spent into a little basket of public money that has already been spent, for the purpose of creating a larger figure. It’s being spent almost solely so that politicians can go on telly, and, when asked about the Government’s climate record, say things like “we’ve delivered record investment in new, green, projects”. The actual €40m itself, and how its spent, is of much lesser importance than the message that “we are spending money on Green projects”. It’s political spending.
And Universities are a very useful recipient of political spending: You can toss them money, usually, in the safe expectation that the money won’t go – at least directly – into someone’s trouser pocket. They’ll find all sorts of ways to spend it that are – and this is the critical combination – at once useless, and also harmless. No Government is ever going to fall because a random Institute of Technology spent €80,000 installing a solar panel on the roof of its new unisex public toilet. And if there is a scandal, you can blame University management.
If you want to spend money and point to the spending of money, giving it to Universities is almost the ideal political wheeze.
€40m, though, is not an insignificant amount of money. It’s a big chunk of cash, going straight on projects that have – at the very, very, very best – an environmental impact so minor as to be negligible. And it’s cheered by our politicians in part because the voters allow those politicians to get away with it. We’re a great country for the equating of spending money with progress. The two things are not the same – after all, the HSE budget has basically tripled in 20 years. I am not sure the health service is three times better than it was when we started.