STEPHEN COLLINS

INSIDE POLITICS: THE CAPACITY of the Irish political system to fixate
on the trivial while vitally important issues go without serious
debate has been illustrated once again in recent days.

As Enda Kenny is denounced by the Opposition for stating the
blindingly obvious in Davos, a deep flaw at the heart of his
Government’s approach to the economic crisis continues to pass with
little adverse comment.

When it was elected a year ago, the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition
proclaimed that its mission was to create jobs, yet it is now pursuing
a strategy that will destroy thousands of vital public service jobs in
the months ahead.

The incentivised retirement of doctors, nurses, teachers and other
public servants, on very generous pensions, is a folly of enormous
proportions but there has been no serious questioning of the
underlying policy.

There might be some justification for it if the vacancies created by
the exodus were going to be filled by newly qualified young people but
that is not going to happen. The whole point of the exercise is to
reduce the number of public service jobs for good.

Given that the financial benefit to the exchequer from the process
will be relatively small, when the cost of pensions and lump-sum
payments for those who are leaving are factored in, the question
arises as to why the policy is being pursued at all.

There is an obvious incentive for public servants to retire early with
pensions and tax-free lump sums calculated on the basis of the
salaries paid at the height of the boom. Why the Government is
providing such an incentive when the country is in the throes of an
unemployment crisis defies rational explanation.

Tens of thousands of young people leaving college are being forced to
emigrate due to lack of employment prospects, while their parents’
generation is being offered financial sweeteners to retire early on
gilt-edged pensions the State simply cannot afford.

This is a continuation of the madness that prevailed during the Celtic
Tiger years and very far from the reforming outlook promised by the
Coalition when it took office a year ago. It is all of a piece with
the mentality that regards the Croke Park agreement as sacrosanct
regardless of the consequences for society as a whole.

Contrast the philosophy of Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore, who has
stated time and time again that the Croke Park agreement will be
honoured come what may, with that of the British Labour leader, Ed
Miliband, who has had the courage to say that if it comes to a choice
between cutting jobs or pay in the public service he will opt for pay
cuts.

There is no doubt that the size of the Irish public service pay bill
is a problem for the exchequer but this is not because we have too
many public servants. The Public Sector Trends Report 2011, published
by the Institute of Public Administration, found that “numbers
employed in the public sector, as a percentage of total employment,
are not excessive by European standards”. However, it also found that
“the compensation of top and middle managers in central government is
towards the higher end of European norms”.

Rather than confront that issue, the Government has chosen to follow
the path of its predecessor and appease vested interests in the public
service by paying people to go rather than tackling the cost of pay
and pensions.

Even if it wanted to face up to the issue of pay in the public
service, the Government would face the difficulty that it has lost the
moral high ground through the way it has dealt with pay in the
political system.

Enda Kenny began well by cutting his taoiseach’s salary to €200,000
and applying proportional cuts to Ministers. However, the publication
of figures detailing the extraordinary pension entitlements of retired
office holders took some of the gloss off that decision.

Even more significantly, the huge salaries paid to some of the
Government’s advisers undermined the earlier good work. While the
Coalition may not legally be able to reduce existing pension
entitlements to former ministers, the salaries paid to its own
political advisers are directly under its control.

That Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin could
make an argument for paying his own adviser a salary of €133,000
showed just how out of touch with reality he and some of his
colleagues are.

There is no reason why any ministerial adviser should be paid more
than a TD’s salary of €92,672. That figure should have been
established from the very beginning of the Coalition’s term as the
maximum pay for an adviser. To be fair, most of the Government’s
advisers are paid less than that, but a number do have salaries of
over €100,000, with two earning €168,000. Political advisers do
valuable work but there is no justification for the taxpayer having to
fund such lavish salaries.

As for the Taoiseach’s comments in Davos, the controversy is a storm
in a teacup. Kenny’s reference to the Celtic Tiger years as “a system
that spawned greed to a point where it just went out of control
completely with a spectacular crash” was perfectly apt.

If he is to be faulted, it should be for the general absolution he
gave to the Irish people in his television address before the budget
suggesting that nobody need take any responsibility for the disaster.
Contrived controversies over so-called gaffes helped to obscure what
was happening during the boom. And it seems they are doing the same
now.

De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine:
Domine, exaudi vocem meam:
Fiant aures tuae intendentes,
in vocem deprecationis meae.
Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine:
Domine, quis sustinebit?
Quia apud te propitiatio est:
et propter legem tuam sustinui te, Domine.
Sustinuit anima mea in verbo eius:
speravit anima mea in Domino.
A custodia matutina usque ad noctem:
speret Israel in Domino.
Quia apud Dominum misericordia:
et copiosa apud eum redemptio.
Et ipse redimet Israel,
ex omnibus iniquitatibus eius.
Gloria Patri, et Filio,
et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,
et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

PSALM 129: DE PROFUNDIS (English) —
to be said while processing to the refectory

Out of the depths I have cried to Thee, O Lord: * Lord, hear my voice.
Let Thy ears be attentive * to the voice of my supplication.
If Thou, O Lord, wilt mark iniquities: * Lord, who shall stand it?
For with Thee there is merciful forgiveness: * and by reason of thy
law, I have waited for Thee, O Lord.
My soul hath relied on His word, * my soul hath hoped in the Lord.
From the morning watch even until night, * let Israel hope in the Lord.
Because with the Lord there is mercy: and with him plentiful redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel * from all his iniquities.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son, * and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, * world without
end. Amen.

By Charles Moore

06 Jan 2012

Dr Johnson said that “most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things”, and that was 250 years before Nick Clegg tried to reform the British constitution.

Last year, Mr Clegg failed to persuade the British people, in a referendum, that the Alternative Vote system was the answer to their political ills. This year, he hopes to persuade both Houses of Parliament to invent a new House of Lords. He thinks the present House is “an affront to the principles of openness which underpin a modern democracy”.

Actually, there is a close relationship between electoral reform and the reformed second chamber, because one of the key provisions of the Clegg White Paper is that the new House of Lords… but stop a moment!
Will it actually be called the House of Lords?

Mr Clegg is said to favour the idea because it gives a sense of “continuity”. Others point out that after the transition period, there will be no lords in it. It will no more be a House of actual Lords than that south London disco, the Ministry of Sound, is an actual government ministry. Since continuity is not what one wants if one is getting rid of an “affront”, the critics say, the new thing should be called the Senate. The doubts about the name indicate the doubts about the project…

Anyway, as I was saying, the Clegg plan for our new model democracy insists that the elected members, 80 per cent of the (working title) “House of Lords”, would be chosen by the single transferable vote
(STV) in multi-member constituencies. If there is one thing that the Liberal Democrats really, really want out of their time in coalition, it is a perpetual blocking power over any government by majority. STV would achieve this. From their point of view, that is fair enough, but one wonders whether it is a good idea to alter the entire basis of our centuries-old second chamber just to give more of a look-in to a party that currently holds only 57 seats in the House of Commons.

No one asks what general principle should apply in constitutional reform. I would suggest borrowing a famous one from the field of medical ethics: “First, do no harm.” Right now, we are struggling with the effects of ill-digested constitutional reform in relation to devolution, human rights and the European Union, change that has not observed that principle. Do we really need more of it?

It is obvious that, if one were starting from scratch today, one would not create the present House of Lords. But this is true, too, of the Monarchy, and even, when one thinks about it, of the House of Commons.
We are not starting from scratch, luckily. The most important thing about successful institutions is that they exist. This is what the political theorists call “prescription”. As Enoch Powell put it, when he combined with Michael Foot in 1969 to see off the then plan for Lords reform, normal people are better than highly educated ones at recognising the power of the sentence: “It has long been so, and it works.”

True, the modern House of Lords is not a thing of beauty. The previous attempt to make it more “21st century” made it worse. By getting rid of all but 92 hereditary peers and replacing them with hundreds of political appointees (some of whom, it turned out, had paid the Labour Party for the privilege), Tony Blair weakened the independence and fair-mindedness of the place. His setting up of a goody-goody appointments commission failed to prevent corruption on an almost Lloyd George scale. The post-Blair House of Lords is physically overcrowded and too partisan, almost an ermine slum.

But it still does fairly well the job it is asked to do. Large numbers of mostly decent, thoughtful, experienced people work hard to revise laws passed by the more powerful, more political, hastier, elected House of Commons. Mr Clegg’s White Paper admits this. “The House of Lords,” it agrees, “has a reputation for the careful consideration of legislation.” It emphasises that there should be no change in its functions. It never explains why, if the job is being done well, and is not changing, all the people doing it should be replaced.

We all nod solemnly when anyone says that pretty much anything should be more democratic, but the reformers in the House of Commons find it hard to understand that the Lords is not a replica of what the Commons is. If it were elected, that is the way it would tend. The funny thing is that, if this happens, the MPs who pushed for the reform will be the first to complain. They will hate a struggle for popular legitimacy between the two Houses. They could avoid such a fight if only they stopped agitating about the Lords and concentrated on making the Commons the proper law-making body it has almost ceased to be.

As MPs and peers focus on the details, one starts to hear more murmurs of unease. Even those who say they want reform find they like the features of the very thing they are trying to abolish. This week, for example, it came out that the joint committee of Lords and Commons on reform does not like the Clegg idea of a new chamber with only 300 members (currently there are nearly 800, though only half are active).
They have spotted that almost all of these 300 will be professional politicians, full time, fully paid, drugged up with allowances. They know people do not like that, and they think it would be better if members of the new House had a wider acquaintance with life. So they propose 450 members, part-time, and paid only when they turn up. A good idea – but that is what, in the existing House of Lords, we already have!

Similarly, there is a lot of humming and hawing about how “faith”
might be represented, since the Clegg plan reduces the 26 Church of England bishops in the Lords to the same number as Jesus’s Apostles.
No one can quite work out how wider faith representation might be apportioned. Gradually, an unspoken thought dawns on those concerned:
in the Lords, the Anglican bishops are hospitable to the worries of other churches and faiths. Any other form of representation would become too factional. The best way to do it is the way it is done already.

What will actually happen? The Coalition Agreement pledges the Government to come forward with legislation. It does not pledge it to legislate. I wouldn’t be surprised if this fine distinction becomes important. Tories are puzzled that Mr Clegg has chosen this subject, because Lords reform is famously hard to enact. Consensus is essential, both morally and in terms of parliamentary time, and consensus is not there. As the thing rolls forward, people will look at the proposed constituencies, voting systems, names, numbers, transitional arrangements, appointment of ministers etc, and they will not, when they get down to it, agree. As Tony Blair, always more convincing as a cynic than an idealist, put it in his memoirs last year, “There’s a huge head of steam behind it now, though I still somehow doubt it will actually happen.”

Why, then, is David Cameron giving so much rope on this dangerous subject to Mr Clegg? If asked, he would say that he is bound to do so by the terms of the Coalition. But he is a hard-headed fellow, and he may not grieve if, with all that rope, his Deputy Prime Minister hangs himself.