Journalism is an interesting trade in that in theory, it is entirely and totally about relating verifiable and true facts to the public, but in practice, it must necessarily be about much more than that. For example, were one to report on the economic performance of the republic of Ireland solely using verifiable facts and figures, then things would look very rosy indeed.
For example, our GDP per capita is an eye-watering $103,000. What that means is that if the total income generated in the state was doled out equally to each person in the state, then we’d all get one hundred and three thousand US dollars per year. If you use the somewhat less exuberant figure of GNI (Gross National Income) per capita, then each of us would still get ninety-nine thousand dollars, on paper. This compares favourably to the Germans, whose figure is just sixty-six thousand dollars, or to the hated British, who, you’ll be glad to hear, manage just fifty-five thousand dollars apiece.
Our national debt, too, as I reported earlier this week, is in a very healthy place. By 2027, Ireland will have one of the lowest national debt to GNI ratios in the western world. The Government, even with a slight decline in recent months, continues to rake in bumper tax revenues.
All in all, if you were to dole out the marks for economic performance, based solely on the figures, the Irish Government would objectively be one of the most successful in the western world.
Yet journalism is not only about facts and figures. There are also the intangibles – the things you can’t quite pin down but which nevertheless are observably real. Like, for example, the fact that a great many people are struggling.
I was speaking, just this week, to a long-time acquaintance who, I’d assumed, would be doing well financially. Both he and his wife work professional jobs, both earn in excess of €50,000 annually, co-own their own home, and have parented two young children. Yet they are, he revealed, at the pin of their collar.
Indeed, in my own life, this is something I’ve noticed: My wife and I were recently marvelling at the fact that every time we leave the house these days, we appear to come back at least €50 worse off. The price of everything – from groceries to running cars to even a Netflix subscription – appears to have increased dramatically faster than either of our incomes. Even if inflation has eased on paper, all that means is that things are no longer getting worse as quickly. The price increases of recent years certainly have not been reversed.
I was intrigued by this tweet yesterday by sitting MEP and current MEP candidate, Luke Ming Flanagan. Politicians in general, evidently, cannot always be trusted about what is being said to them “on the doors”, so take this as a data point rather than gospel:
5 days canvassing. Biggest issue by far. Cost of Living. Coming up at least 20 times more often than immigration. You wouldn't think that listening to @rtenews
— Luke 'Ming' Flanagan (@lukeming) May 2, 2024
The Government is, I think, objectively vulnerable on the cost of living. Ben’s exchange yesterday with Finance Minister Michael McGrath was instructive in relation to establishment attitudes to much of this issue: He sympathises with people feeling the impact of carbon tax increases, he says, but ultimately this is just something we have to do “because we’re part of the European Union”:
Asked why Ireland is raising carbon tax when its emissions are a fraction of a percent of the world total, Finance Minister Michael McGrath says he hears this point "quite often".
However, he says "We have to play our part" because "we are part of a collective European Union." pic.twitter.com/P31aUIXNSV
— gript (@griptmedia) May 2, 2024
Is that really good enough? When, a lot of people might be asking themselves, did we vote for that? In which treaty?
It is, of course, also not entirely true: While Ireland has chosen to bind itself to EU-wide emissions targets, it certainly has not committed to achieving those targets via any particular taxation policy. Taxation is simply the method that Dublin has chosen to employ – a conscious strategy, aping the decades-long war on smoking – to discourage driving by making it more expensive.
The difference is, of course, that smoking was never a necessity for people, while driving very much is. Yesterday morning, I asked Fatima to travel to a particular place outside Dublin to cover a particular story: Google maps put the journey time at 40 minutes if she used a car, and four hours if she relied on the public transport network. The same story applies to most of us, right across the island. We’re being taxed to discourage us from doing something that is unavoidable if we wish to live a normal life.
The Irish political establishment, like most of its kind, is almost entirely allergic to the idea of tax cuts for the public. That it is so is just a function of basic human psychology: The Government and the State’s power is derived in large part from the resources it can muster: Reducing revenue is to reduce state power and state capacity. Civil servants in particular are allergic to it, as are most politicians.
Last week, Independent Council Candidate in Dun Laoghaire, Cormac Lucey, pointed out that while civil servants and public servants in Ireland have had the benefit of “pay restoration” reversing the salary cuts they took during the great recession, the rest of us have never gotten “tax restoration”: The new taxes such as the USC which were applied to us to help the state through the recession. The recession went away; the USC stayed. For some reason, almost every political party is fine with that.
Part of the reason this is flying under the radar is, of course, just bandwidth: The country is rarely able to have more than one major issue debated concurrently. Right now, immigration is the issue dominating the airwaves.
I suspect, though, that Luke Ming Flanagan is correct. The cost of living is just as much – if not more – of a problem for many voters. Particularly in middle class communities where admitting to struggling is much more of a taboo than it is in working class estates. There’s an open door waiting to be pushed there, I think, for the parties or candidates with the right message.