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If there is one thing that defines Irish political culture, it is the fact that there is not one political party that does not consider spending the public’s money to be an act of virtue in and of itself. Slightly older readers may recall the sight of Michael Noonan, whose unique pronounciation of “milluns” and “billuns” became a trademark by itself, defending every Government policy with a recitation of how much money was being spent, and how much spending on a particular area had increased under his tenure as finance Minister.
It will be the same this week: Government will treat the spending of extra “billuns” of public money as proof positive that it cares. The opposition will treat the fact that further “billuns” were not spent as proof positive that Government does not really care. Nobody, or at least nobody of any great political significance, will ask whether the public might not have done a better job with the money by itself, had it been left to them rather than seized in taxation
On housing, for example, the Government has almost limitless money to throw at the problem, should it wish to do so. Is there anybody at all in Ireland who thinks that, were they able, the Irish Government would not simply write a cheque and solve the housing crisis once and for all? The problem is that in Ireland, we treat every problem as a mere financial issue, and pay little attention at all to the structural issues that are predominantly causing the problems. All the money in the world will not magically create ten thousand more qualified builders and electricians. And all the money in the world will not magically create a thousand more qualified medics to staff an expanded health service.
If anything, the Budget in Ireland is a little bit of a sideshow, given centre stage by a media obsessively used to covering it: Minor changes to taxes and pensions, an extra tenner a week here, or fiver there, make no difference to most people’s lives. But because it is the political centrepiece of the year, it will be obsessively covered as evidence of the relative priorities of Government and opposition alike. This obsession, I would argue, significantly obscures the bigger questions.
For example, almost all of Ireland’s major problems can be attributed to one singular cause: We have too many people for the existing infrastructure of the state to bear. That is why health service waiting lists are exorbitant, despite enormous increases in health spending. It is why schools are over-subscribed and classrooms full to bursting. It is why there are so few available homes, and so many home-seekers. It is why the Gardai are understaffed, and the courts backlogged. It is why our public transport system is creaking, and why immigration has caused so many problems in so many communities.
But the truth is that no Irish political party has anything to say about that question, because it is one that requires thought, rather than simply mindless additional spending. In fact, additional spending on all of these over-clogged systems is probably making the problems worse, rather than better: Every extra cent the Government spends on housing is simply an extra cent the state spends to outbid a private builder for the right to get a house built, for example. It does not necessarily add to the total number of new homes, but it sure does push up the price of private homebuilding in an economy where that is unaffordable for many.
In Education, there is nobody willing to talk about the thorny issue of elite over-production: We are producing thousands of graduates, and devaluing undergraduate degrees in the process. This is creating a generation of educated urban poor: People who are vastly over-qualified for the jobs they are doing, under-paid relative to their expectations, and entirely incapable of starting families or building or buying homes. The age of marriage is increasing. The number of children we are having is falling. The “better life” promised by free third level education simply has not materialised, but we’ll continue to fund it anyway.
In health, we also continue to drive costs up: The problem, as every GP will tell you, is a shortage of GPs. The Government’s answer is not to tackle that issue, but to make GP care free for more and more children, which just ends up clogging up more and more waiting rooms and making the fundamental problem even worse than if they had never spent a cent on free GP care in the first place. The more money you put into the demand side, the more you drive up costs. Notably, there will be no scheme announced this week to pay significant bonuses to Irish doctors and nurses working abroad if they wish to re-locate home, which might make a difference. But money will be spent to make our existing medics work even harder.
All of this is what happens when you make spending a virtue of itself. Our politicians should not be judged on how much they spend, or on how much they profess to care. They should be judged on the results of that spending.
A Government that has doubled health spending, and managed to make the system worse, should not be praised for announcing further budget increases. An opposition that has observed such spending, and its results, should not be praised for demanding even more spending.
But that’s what we do, on budget week. And there’s no sign that we’re about to stop.
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