I have a confession, and a public apology, to make: Yesterday I lost my temper and shouted – yes shouted – at a Fine Gael canvasser who had the misfortune of coming to my door at the wrong moment.
This fella was – and who might blame him – full of the joys of spring. Did I enjoy the budget, he asked? Yes, I said, I did very well out of it, but it probably wouldn’t buy my vote. The canvasser looked downcast and asked, reasonably enough, why that might be the case. “Sure North Tipperary needs a Fine Gael TD”, said he.
It was that line, I think, that set me on the path to losing my temper.
Why, I enquired of this fellow, does North Tipperary need a Fine Gael TD? Is it because Nenagh might benefit from the treatment already doled out to Roscrea, with its hotels shuttered to locals in favour of migrants? Is it perhaps because we need bike shelters of our own? Would a Fine Gael TD for North Tipperary fix Limerick Hospital, when two Fine Gael TDs for Limerick have not managed it so far?
Now at this point, in retrospect, I feel sorry for the poor man. He was out canvassing on his own, and clearly wasn’t prepared for this onslaught, probably having heard more from my neighbours about the potholes and lack of hedge cutting on our roads. In fairness to him, he was stretching for an answer to the question I asked, and it was his bad luck to come up with a particularly bad one.
“That’s not the Government’s fault”, he said, referring to the Bike Shed, “it was the civil service that did that”.
As a rule, dear reader, I do not have a quick temper. I am not somebody who “loses it” or “flies off the handle” at the drop of a hat. This time, to my regret, I lost it, and asked him somewhat impolitely to leave my property.
To be clear, the anger I expressed at the unfortunate canvasser remains even now, writing about it some hours later. Because his answer gets to the root of a fundamental problem that afflicts the Irish body politic from top to bottom: The notion that politics isn’t really about management of the country at all.
This week, Simon Harris was interviewed on Virgin Media this week about his infamous promise on scoliosis way back in 2017. His defence of that promise was an example of what I am talking about:
Does @SimonHarrisTD regret promises he once made about scoliosis care?
— TonightVMTV (@TonightVMTV) October 2, 2024
“I know that had I not set that target, or accepted that target [from the HSE], the system wouldn’t have been as focused, and not as many children would have got the surgeries”@ClaireBrockTV | #TonightVMTV pic.twitter.com/VHI1UUJlvS
What Harris is saying there in effect is that his job was to set a target in order to focus the civil servants under his management on delivery. Because he set a target, they worked harder, he says, even though they ultimately missed that target.
But here’s the follow-up question: Aside from setting that target, what did he, Simon Harris, do?
You might be forgiven, though that follow up question wasn’t asked, for noticing that he provides no follow-up actions on his part. He appears to believe that his job as Minister was to set the policy, and then it was someone else’s job to make that policy happen. But this is not real-world thinking.
We elect politicians – in theory – to manage the country, and to manage the civil service. One might think part of that might involve meetings with civil servants to figure out what the problems were that were causing the delays in treatment to children with Scoliosis. If those problems were in his own department, then the thing might be to reform the department to tackle those problems. If the problems were external, then he might convene meetings with other ministers and departments. Ultimately this is the job – this is what the big salary is for. To run the country, not to tell other people to run the country and then leave them to it.
Now my Fine Gael canvasser simply hit that nerve. The idea that Ministers might be responsible for what the civil service does appeared entirely foreign to him. In this, I suspect that neither he nor his party is alone, because it is an ailment that afflicts basically the entirety of the professional political class.
This is one reason why, I think, so much politics in Ireland these days is ticky-tack nonsense: Ban this, regulate that, give money to something else. Buy mobile phone bags for schools for €9m – that sort of thing.
The big structural issues, like planning backlogs or health capacity crises, or wider EU migration policy, are viewed consistently as being above the political pay grade. The only duty Fine Gael – or at least this canvasser – appear to believe that Government has is to award money to various other people and hope that the problems resolve. Amidst my shouting at this poor man, for example, he mentioned that Fine Gael had increased the funding to solve problems in Limerick Hospital.
But has that worked, I asked?
Now reader, I should not have shouted. I was rude and impolite, and honestly if you take one thing from this article it should be this – don’t do what I did. The gentleman in question was taking time out of his day to engage me and my neighbours in the political process and seek our feedback. Chances are that instead of taking my feedback on board, he probably just now thinks I’m an arsehole and a crank – I wouldn’t blame him. His candidate – Councillor Philomena Bugler – is by all accounts a decent and hardworking local representative.
But still, the civil service are not to blame for the bike shed, or the children’s hospital, or the death of a teenager in Limerick. We elect politicians to manage the country, and address the big problems.
What we get, instead, is bribes and bans and the outsourcing of blame. I’ve just about had enough of it. Still, that didn’t entitle me to shout at anyone, and if you happen to be reading this, sir, I’m sorry.