David Higgins

After last month’s Fine Gael Frontbench re-shuffle I gave my reactions on this site. One month on it’s clear to me that Kenny has picked an excellent team and I’m more excited than ever for a General Election.

Michael Noonan has so far proven himself to be indispensable in his role as Finance Spokesman. He is a straight talker and that was made very clear in an interview he gave this past weekend to the Irish Independent. He is not afraid of telling the truth that 40,000 public servants will have to be laid off and that semi-state companies must be sold in order to sort out our public finances. He is a breath of fresh air to the role but he also brings great experience having marked Ray McSharry, Bertie Ahern and Charlie McCreevy as Finance spokesman before. As I’ve said before I await this years budget with great anticipation. It will be a tough budget, but at least Noonan’s budget speech will give some comfort and entertainment to people watching at home.

I was also thrilled to see Noonan leading the attack against the government when he called Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern “a nasty little man”. Ahern is the Minister who banned headshops and who has re-introduced blasphemy into the law.

Sadly some have not welcomed the new Frontbench, particularly the appointment of Frank Feighan to the position of Spokesman on Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs. Frank doesn’t have fluent Irish but he is now taking lesson to improve his fluency. At present he can’t hold an interview with Irish speaking media.

But here’s the thing, I don’t care! We all speak the English language in this country and if the Gaeltacht communities need to raise issues with our spokesman then they can do so through English. It’s not that hard. Someone made the point that Feighan can’t read reports made in Irish, failing to notice that all reports can be obtained in English too! This is just another populist attack on Fine Gael by lazy journalists who couldn’t be arsed doing some deep research on the real issues of the day.

In my original post I was unhappy at the appointment of Leo Varadkar to the Position of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. I felt he should have been given a bigger role however I’m now satisfied that he has a huge part to play. The debate in this sector now centres around the sale of semi-state assets and there is no better man than Leo to lead our policies. He has been working very hard for the past month and he recently published an analysis of pay and costs in the semi-state sector.

It’s a very interesting read and I’m also looking forward to what Richard Bruton will make of his new responsibility of public sector reform. At the MacGill Summer School he gave an excellent preview of Fine Gael’s vision for a smart state. The full document on public sector reform is due out by the end of the year.

With both Labour and Fine Gael now polling in and around 30% in the opinion polls it’s important that we look deep into both party’s policy documents and policy positions on all the major issues in Ireland today.

Labour may have a strong uppercut with knockout one-liners and visible anger in the Dáil, led by Eamon Gilmore, however do they have a plan to save the country?

Both parties’ websites have policy pages. Labour’s is their “Our ideas and Policies” page while Fine Gael has a “recent policy catalogue” on its site. I have drawn from both these pages to compare the two parties.

Public Sector

Let’s first jump back to last year’s budget and to the thorny issue of public sector pay. Labour is well known as a political wing for the trade union movement and thus their pre-budget proposal was lacking in specific detail. Both Fine Gael and Labour committed to the government’s reduction of €1.3bn in the public sector pay bill however Labour only gave an aspiration to achieve this reduction through negotiations.

Fine Gael, on the other hand, came out with an extensive and detailed alternative budget that gave detailed breakdowns of where the money would come from. This specified that the €1.3bn would be made by a direct cut in pay to those earning above €30,000 in the public sector. There was no aspiration or hope for the future, just hard figures that spelled out the reality. Fine Gael even went above the €1.3bn suggested and proposed a further €500m reduction in the public sector pay bill through redundancies in the HSE, CIE and through the closing down of wasteful quangos.

Next, we come to the Croke Park deal, a sweet guarantee that ensures not a single pay cut or forced redundancy in the public sector unless there is a further deterioration in the economy. Seems pretty fair to me and that’s why Fine Gael has come out in favour of the proposal. We haven’t engaged in a massive campaign to promote the deal, or to influence union members. We’ve simply stated our position on the matter, a position the public are entitled to know.

However Labour have ducked and dodged this issue right from the beginning. They will not state any position on the deal and if we are to take their members view we can see that two motions were passed at this year’s party conference calling for the restoration of the budget pay cuts and an abolition of the pension levy! That’s the only position I’ve seen from Labour on this issue and so I am led to conclude that this is their policy position on the matter.

Banking

Labour and Fine Gael have roughly the same view on this issue, the establishment of a state run investment bank. This is the good bank option, as opposed to the government’s bad bank, NAMA. Fine Gael announced this policy first and then Labour followed suit months later with an almost identical proposal.

The main difference between the two parties is that Labour favours an ideologically lead nationalisation of the banks. This would be catastrophic for the banks because ultimately a bank belongs free in the marketplace. It’s almost like releasing an animal back into the wild where it belongs, with all the other animals. Keeping a bank nationalised is like keeping an animal in captivity.

Stimulus

Labour has no known policy for a stimulus package for the economy while Fine Gael has a plan to create over 100,000 jobs in the energy, communications and water sectors. It’s called NewERA and it’s a costed and well thought out plan to improve our infrastructure and create employment in the process. Sadly, once again Labour fails to even produce a plan on this, let alone to include specifics costings of their plan.

Health

I have to give Labour some credit in this area. They were the first party to endorse the principal of universal healthcare back in 2001. Fine Gael has since come around to the concept and has adopted a different model based on the Dutch system. The fundamental difference here again is specifics. The Fine Gael proposal has plenty of detail and they’ve even created a dedicated website to explain their policy and what it will provide to the public. Labour continues to only support the principal and it seems they simply want a full bureaucratic public healthcare system that has plagued our system and other health systems in the UK, France and elsewhere in Europe.

The Dutch model means that everyone has private health coverage, it has ended hospital waiting lists and the Fine Gael plan proposes FREE GP care for all, while keeping healthcare spending at its present levels. This can be done by cutting out all the managerial waste in the HSE and by employing competition between insurance companies. Fine Gael sees the benefit of the free market while Labour still remains in its backward mode of socialism and state control.

Education

Education is a huge priority for Fine Gael. Following the budget in December, Education Spokesman Brian Hayes organised large demonstrations against the removal of special needs teachers from a school in Tallaght. This school had 2/3 of its staff removed, in what can only be described as a heartless budget.

As well as protecting the vulnerable in our education system Fine Gael has two key proposals in the third level sector. The first is the re-introduction of third level fees. Our principal is that no student should pay at the door but instead pay after they have completed college. This would be a student loan system similar to many other countries across Europe and in the US. It’s fair to the students and it provides much needed funds to colleges and universities and this will maintain a high standard of facilities and service into the future.

Sadly the Labour party won’t budge on this issue. They aspire to a completely free third level sector, something that is neither practical nor affordable. Since free third level access was introduced in the 1990s it has only served to give higher income families an easy ride while it has not lead to a higher participation rate among lower income families. With Fine Gael’s proposal, supports can be given to those who need it, while those who can pay, pay.

Fine Gael has also recognised the economic benefits of overseas students coming to study in Irish universities. Simple measures that are outlined in their policy document would lead to tens of thousands of more students coming here each year.

Labour also has a policy document called “Priorities in Education”. Again, it’s another document that is purely aspirational and it doesn’t take any regard to our huge deficit and national debt. It even calls for an increase in education spending and to make our spending on education higher than European norms! We just don’t have the money to do that. I agree with Labour’s views on the separation of Church and school however otherwise it’s a completely useless document.

Half of the document is “Labour’s school for the 21st Century”. Firstly this school isn’t theirs, it’s designed by an architecture firm and it’s nothing new! My school in Knocklyon, built in 2000 and other schools like Malahide Community School have almost identical designs. Labour thinks it’s looking to the future, but it’s actually a decade behind! This cross section is almost identical to my school.

A passport is a human right of any citizen.

It proves nationality, but more importantly it’s the means by which we travel in and out of this island. Without a passport you cannot go on holidays, you cannot make business trips and you can’t even emigrate to find work.

450,000 people in this country are out of work. It’s bad enough that they’ve lost their jobs, and it’s even worse because there are no jobs for them here. Now, to compound the problem, the unemployed must queue for a passport overnight, and they may not even get one because of the selfish actions of those who still have a job!

The CPSU’s industrial action on the passport office in Molesworth Street is not hitting the government in any way. It is only attacking the people that they claim to protect, the “ordinary working people”.

It is now reported that over 50,000 passport applications remain unprocessed in the system. The industrial action is primarily to blame for this, but it is not the only cause of the problem.

There are only three machines in the country that make passports! What’s more startling to learn is that two of those machines are now broken! However, let’s assume that a passport machine only works an eight hour day, like the average unionised worker. Surely, when there is a threefold reduction in the number of machines available then we can simply increase by three fold the productivity of the machine.

What I’m simply saying is, have the passport machine running 24/7 to clear the backlog, it’s that simple. However, we need workers to operate the machine and God forbid that any public servant should work “unsociable hours”.

People have lost thousands of Euro because they’ve missed their flights, and we must ask the question whether the government or the unions are liable to pay compensation. Today, Fine Gael TD Alan Shatter called for the CPSU to pay for any compensation claims. I assume by his comments that the Department of Foreign Affairs might have successful compensation claims to deal with. I hope the unions pay the full cost of other actions!

This crisis also raises the question, should we privatise passport production?

I’d be firmly in favour of this proposal. Private firms cut out the waste that is a cancer on our public services. They would run the passport office efficiently and they would get passports to citizens with minimal waiting times. Obviously, there is the risk that the private firm would use this facility for malicious purposes however if the government provides the same oversight as it does the passport office presently then there is no risk.

Either we privatise the system or we just face the same crisis the next time the unions don’t get what they want. We are citizens of Ireland and a passport is our right. Don’t let a vested interest take control of your life, and don’t let them hold you for random!