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It was recently revealed that on average, €8.4 Billion of taxpayers money is wasted each year in Government spending on healthcare, social welfare & infrastructure projects gone wrong. For example, over €230 million being spent on a Healthcare Payroll I.T. system that was only supposed to cost €8 million, so it cost almost 30 times the original budget. That’s like getting a quote for having your bathroom done for €1,500 and ending up with a bill for €45,000 from “Govt Builders Ltd”. Would you pay up? I don’t think so! |
Staying with the health service for a moment, did you know that the Government rakes in over €1.1 billion from tobacco sales in Ireland. Furthermore, it is estimated that over 10% of the annual health budget, equating to over €1 billion is being wasted due to too many health quango’s, committees and management staff, lack of proper systems, failed I.T. and management in the health service. Most people would agree that this money would be better spent by giving nurses better pay and conditions, funding more beds, support staff and doctors. It seems that the Government itself has its own staffing and management problems - a report on the health service by Deloitte & Touche, ironically commissioned by the Government itself, stated: “The Department of Health has little or no personnel with experience in financial, statistical or social analysis, strategic planning, health economics or people with direct experience in the health service”. A rather damning finding to say the least, so one might question the calibre of people running our health service and it is little surprise that things aren’t going well. You might be wondering what the point of this article is and I’d say that it’s about the single most important issue facing us here in Ireland – “Political Competence”. Let me explain. As in the example above of getting your bathroom done for a reasonable cost by a professional Company, every day we expect things to be done properly and within our expectations.
Then why are most of us happy to let our elected Governments, over successive years, squander billions of our hard earned cash? The reason is simple. We have never questioned the real competence of our elected representatives. We just accept them even though we don’t trust them, isn’t that really true? Just look at them closely for a moment; they are rarely from a business background where they know and understand the importance of getting things done and the concept of profit and loss, value for money or setting achievable goals. They rarely answer the hard questions put to them and worst of all, they spend most of their time in meetings about meetings, pontificating about who said what and putting the World to rights over 5 pints of Guinness, with their lack-lustre cronies, in hotel bars all around the Country in between local constituency meetings. Driving down from Dublin last week, I was listening to a senior politician on the radio being asked about recent evidence that 75% of asylum seekers are probably bogus and draining huge resources. In our one-sided World of political correctness, rather than engage in the discussion, he simply did not entertain the question and spent 15 minutes avoiding the issue until the interviewer just gave up asking and time was up. Yet the same politician will get his quota of votes this year because his voters like him and have always voted for his party, irrespective of his actual ability to do the job or failure to stand up to real issues.
That’s the bottom line. A recent survey about voter behaviour showed that we are all too complacent, especially the younger voters, with more than 40% of them not voting in the last election. Much of this apathy stems from a lack of belief or trust in politicians in general and who can blame them, given the revelations from recent Tribunals of corruption in the highest places in this Country. A worrying finding was that young voters are greatly disillusioned and don’t feel that any particular politician will deliver results more than the other. As we gear up for another election, we really need to think carefully about who we vote for. Surely we need someone who is honest, not afraid to tell the truth, not make promises that he/she cannot keep, has a solid track record in achieving results both publicly and in business, is respected by and can connect with the views of younger voters. Also, this candidate might perhaps be an Independent from an ethnic minority background so that his/her views cannot be taken as racist or politically incorrect but would have a useful role to play as an Independent Seat in Government. Now that would be great! A recent survey revealed the following questions most pertinent in the minds of the younger voters that seem to reflect a poor level of value from Government:
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Why have you consistently failed to deliver on Environmental promises as evidenced by recent EU penalties to Ireland in acting too little, too late? |
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Why do decisions on Shannon Airport continue to stagnate with the unions apparently holding all the cards? |
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How will you ensure that the corruption in Irish politics that has so embarrassed the Nation will never happen again? |
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What are your plans for infrastructure development, particularly in the key areas of public transport and funding for same? |
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Are you going to put more funding into primary education and life skills training which really doesn’t exist? |
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What are you practically doing to encourage decentralisation? |
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How do you intend to address the catastrophic collapse in the numbers of people doing science and engineering at 2nd and 3rd level and the embarrassing number of people failing ordinary level maths? |
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Why do Governments continue to squander taxpayers money and then no-one is accountable? Will this ever change? |
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What do you intend to do to about the difficulties for the average person to get on the property ladder? |
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What are you going to do about the chronic increase in under age binge drinking and obesity? Will you ban junk food and drinks adverts? |
I am sure that these voters are not alone in feeling rather frustrated at how our elected Politicians seem to lunge from one crisis to another, fighting with each other at every turn, rather than focusing on solving the many problems that face all of us at local and national level.
Jas Kalsi, BSc(Eng)Hons, MBA is a Management Consultant and Past President of the Ennis Chamber of Commerce
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