Only the hard line can haul country to a safe harbour
Sunday July 26 2009
Leftish liberals like to think they take in media with an open mind. But they are prisoners of their peer group. Talk to any RTE reporter.
Like many people I am a prisoner of prejudices. But I sometimes get out of jail. Facts eventually force me to change my mind, even if I resist at first. The hard line always helped me more than the havering line.
Lezek Kowlakowski, the Polish philosopher who died last week, dented my belief in Marxism. Just as Conor Cruise O'Brien dented my prejudices on Irish nationalism. They did so by not trimming their positions.
Neither pretended Stalinists or Provos were products of some distortion of Soviet communism or irredentist Irish nationalism. Stalinists and Provos were predictable products of two flawed ideas.
That is why, following Kowalski and O'Brien, I favour the hard line when advancing my three major core positions. I believe we should defend Irish democracy, defend Israeli democracy and defend Western democracy.
After that comes what I call small "p" politics. Top of the list are three issues. Finish off the Provo follow-ups. Finish off the criminal mafias. Tackle the public sector, starting with the padded political class of which I am a temporary member.
The PSNI are making progress against the Real IRA. Dermot Ahern is getting down and dirty with the crime gangs. So we can now concentrate on the core issue: Reform of the public sector.
First comes pay and pensions. No need to demonise: the facts do the work. On average, we pay public workers 50 per cent more than private workers. That's a scandal.
So are pensions. Look at what it would cost a public employee to buy their pension in the private sector. The average civil servant would have to pay €27 in every €100 earned. A teacher would have to pay €31. A judge would have to cough up €87 in every €100 earned!
Incredibly, private workers are also taxed to pay for public pensions -- while mostly having no pension themselves. This raw injustice required remedy long before this recession. But it is urgent in the ugly world of the Limerick lay-offs last week.
Pay and pensions can be reformed right now. Waffling about waste is what I call a Richard Bruton Distractor. And it plays to RTE's public sector agenda. Check out Morning Ireland last Monday.
Aine Lawlor introduced Dr Ed Walsh saying he had written a "strong piece" about the public sector in the Sunday Business Post. So he did. He wrote 27 paragraphs. Broadly, 14 dealt with social welfare issues, 13 dealt with public sector pay.
But Lawlor avoided any mention of public pay and pensions. This left listeners with the incorrect impression that a hard-hearted Ed Walsh wanted only to cut welfare. And it was all his own fault.
Walsh should have remembered that RTE is not Newstalk. It does not like to discuss pay and pensions. Walsh should have been more wary. He should have put public pay at the top of his spiel before dealing with social welfare reform.
Here the hard line is the only line. Jack O'Connor and his media adviser Frank Connolly act on that assumption. Instead of defending indefensible pay and pensions, they make diversionary attacks. Hence O'Connor's hard line on the minimum wage, on social welfare and also on Permanent TSB.
It's time the Taoiseach took them on. How can highly paid union bosses like Jack O'Connor, Frank Connolly and Peter McLoone continue to defend the perks of public sector employees at the expense of the thousands of Siptu members thrown out of work?
Don't the disparities between public and private make their red blood boil? Plainly not. O'Connor and Connolly prefer to berate bankers and builders. But the bankers are on the back foot and the builders are bankrupt. So where are we to find €50m a day?
Even if we hung every banker and every builder from the nearest lamp-post, we could divide the watching crowd into two groups. The most passive would be the private workers. As they are now.
Because it is the permanent and pensionable public sector minority -- politicians, judges, consultants, professionals and RTE executives -- who bay loudest for builders' blood and cuts in social welfare. And with the sole aim of covering their own asses.
RTE has buried public sector pay and pensions. But the smell will not go away. Or the big question. We borrow €50m every day to keep the State ticking over. Who will foot the bill when it falls due?
"Whose money do you want?" That is what every RTE reporter should ask every advocacy spokesperson. But they avoid it because there are only two awkward answers. The social welfare class must pay, or the public sector must pay.
Or to put it more plainly. Either the poor pay or RTE producers pay. No wonder RTE reporters love Richard Bruton Distractors. And why Eamon Ryan must give us a real alternative to RTE.
Eamon Ryan is an advocate of the Smart Economy. But an energetic economy needs an exemplary public service. Not just good government departments, but great government departments, modelled on best practice in private sector organisations all over the world.
Peter McLoone of Impact says the public sector unions should move forward to meet the future. But if the move does not include reform of pay and pensions it will merely mean digging in. Real reform starts with reverse benchmarking.
Eamon Ryan needs stations like Newstalk 106 to ask awkward questions. Last week Ivan Yates and Conor Brophy continually put these tough question to spokespersons for the IFA, Impact and Siptu. Ryan should require RTE to ask the same questions.
Meanwhile, we cannot go on borrowing €50m a day. Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan must lay the axe to the root. We need a graduated cut in public pay, starting with 30 per cent for the political class and working down to less than five per cent for lower-paid public workers.
Dean Swift said a tree dies from the top. So public sector reform must start with Fianna Fail and the Greens. No government has the moral right to rebuke the public sector unless it first digs deep into its own pocket.
Fianna Fail TDs and senators are dragging their feet. It's time the Taoiseach made them toe the line. It's time to do a de Valera and tell them to take the cut or he will go to the country.
The Taoiseach has nothing to lose. Self-interest will decide the issue. Fianna Fail TDs and senators must now be hard on themselves and soft on the social welfare class. If not, Fianna Fail is finished as a party of the plain people.
Brian Cowen must do what Dermot Ahern did. Ahern took a hard line with his own peer group, the legal class. And the public love him for it.
Likewise, if Cowen confronts his own political class and cuts them to the bone, Fianna Fail has a better than even chance of winning the next General Election. And it would win with the support of many progressive public servants. Time to take the hard line.
