 |
| Jas Kalsi, BSc(Eng)Hons, MBA |
| Home |
|
 |
|
 |
 |
Are Politicians good value for money?
10 Questions that say no. |
I read recently that Banking used to be called the “3-6-3 Business”, which is to take money in at 3%, lend it out at 6% and Tee Off down the local Golf club for 3pm. This formula obviously works as Banks like AIB, with net profits exceeding €1.3 Billion per annum, continue to thrive. If you think about it, this makes great business sense and why should anyone object, since Banks do offer a service that we cannot do without? On the business front, Tesco continue their domination of the retail food and household sector with profits exceeding €1.6 Billion in the last 12 months, but again they are offering a service everyone needs. The main problem however is that we, the consumers, aren’t really getting value for money and you’ll realise this if you fill a shopping trolley in Spain and find that it costs half as much as it does here. Another example is that electricity prices to small businesses in Ireland have increased by a massive 89% in the last 5 years, with domestic users paying some 51% more than the EU average. The Commission for Energy Regulation (CER), with a mandate to protect the interests of the consumer under regulation, seems to be doing the exact opposite when recently sanctioning an average 20% increase of electricity across the board, justifying the increase as necessary due to the increased cost of gas and oil to the industry. Similar “value for money” problems are apparent everywhere we look; the Irish Health Service proven to be squandering in excess of €1 Billion a year due to lack of efficiency as well as being branded highly inefficient and lacking the right management to do the job by the Government’s own appointed consultants Deloitte & Touche. Over €175 Million lost on failed Government sanctioned I.T. projects; corruption in Ireland found at the highest Government level; the list goes on. What this all boils down to is that if we pay for a service, we should expect both value for money and the job to be done properly. It is entirely reasonable to apply this argument to our Government. Through taxes, we are paying for our elected Politicians to be in office, but are we getting value for money from them? The answer has to be a definite NO because everywhere we look, we see these problems, time after time. In the business world, CEO’s don’t have the luxury of staying in office if they constantly deliver losses, so why should our paid TD’s be allowed to fail us and not be held accountable? It all starts at the point when we elect our local constituency representative. Do we really look at his or her skills in delivering what they promise or do we really care? A recent survey about voter behaviour showed that we are all too complacent, especially the younger voters, with more than 100,000 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 in this Country. A worrying finding was that young voters are greatly disillusioned and don’t feel that any particular political party will deliver results more than the other.
The survey revealed the following “15 Questions” most pertinent in the minds of the younger voters that seem to reflect a poor level of value from Government: |
|
Why have you consistently failed to deliver on Environmental promises as evidenced by recent EU penalties to Ireland in acting too little, too late? |
|
Why has it taken so long to come to an agreement on Shannon Airport and why do we still not have proper road and rail infrastructure to support it? |
|
How will you ensure that the corruption in Irish politics that has so embarrassed the Nation will never happen again? |
|
What are your plans for infrastructure development, particularly in the key areas of public transport and funding for same? |
|
Are you going to put more funding into primary education and life skills training which really doesn’t exist? |
|
What are you practically doing to encourage decentralisation? |
|
When are you going to ban untrained drivers off the roads and put a formal state-directed driver training programme in place that involves qualified instructors, minimum hours, night driving, motorway driving and graphic videos of real drunk driving carnage? Untrained drivers includes everyone in the country who never had to sit a driving test. |
|
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? |
|
The current government seems to have an issue with throwing money at projects which don’t work and a Port Tunnel that leaks. Will this ever change? |
|
What do you intend to do to about the difficulties for the average person to get on the property ladder? |
|
| 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. The big issue now is whether they are capable of delivering on the issues and give us “Value for Money”. |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
