This budget says to the Irish people that health and housing don’t matter to Coalition

CHARLIE HAUGHEY knew how to organise a standing ovation. Once, when he was taoiseach, he arrived for a Fianna Fáil event at a remote hall in rural Ireland. Emerging from his chauffeurdriven Mercedes, he explained to the local party bigwig exactly who he would like to see on the little stage beside him, who he would like to meet, what kind of biscuits were acceptable with the tea, all the usual stuff. Then, as almost a throwaway, Haughey added, ‘and I would like a standing ovation’.

‘Jaysus, Boss,’ came the nervous reply. ‘A standing ovation is, like, you know, it’s…’

Haughey glared. ‘It’s, it’s spontaneous,’ the bigwig finished.

Haughey laughed bitterly and waved his hand over the small hall. He ordered that half the chairs, those at the back of the hall, be removed. The back half of what was sure to be a packed hall would then have to stand. Then when the meeting started and El Diablo (as PJ Mara often called him) entered the packed hall from the back door, he should be announced. Everyone who was seated would turn around and see their colleagues standing, and while still clapping would stand up too.

‘That’s how you organise a f***ing standing ovation,’ said Haughey, and carried on.

I was reminded of that scene this week. Senators come into the Dáil chamber on big occasions and they sit at the very back. After Michael McGrath’s Budget speech last Tuesday, two Government senators stood up, those in front looked around, a Fianna Fáiler hissed, ‘get up to f***’ and the Government benches got up. Even Michael McGrath’s kids got the message in the VIP gallery, and since there are seven of them, they contributed to the cacophony.

But as Haughey shows, you can’t be fooled by standing ovations. Even at that, fellow Minister Paschal Donohoe’s colleagues could muster only a smattering of applause. Nobody stood, except for when, a couple of seconds after his speech, former Fine Gael minister Paul Kehoe leapt up and ran out of the chamber. Since he was sitting in a jump seat right in front of Donohoe, it wasn’t a great look.

Fianna Fáil has always been far more fraternal than Fine Gael.

But if you were any Government backbencher looking fearfully at the Sinn Féin tsunami about to crash on your head at the next election, in truth there was little to applaud after the two speeches.

I met ministers in the hushed, downbeat corridors afterwards, trying to spin ‘prudence’. Their eyes betrayed their own disbelief. I reminded them that ‘prudence’ doesn’t win elections.

What Ministers McGrath and Donohoe didn’t calculate on their spreadsheets, I fear, was that a less than financially careful Budget would be far less damaging to democracy than a hardleft, populist government after the next election. This lazy, unimaginative Budget was far more reckless – counter-intuitively – than one of those old Bertie Bonanzas from 20 years ago.

Since our Government spends about €90bn a year, the €14bn distribution in the Budget isn’t a monetary make-or-break. What the Budget does is lay out the political priorities for a Government for the year. It sends a message to the citizens. The overt message is: ‘This is what is important to you, our people’. There are also subliminal messages: thought, energy and elan show they care about solving problems, and not just their own careers.

So forget the 24-hour feelgood factor of a ‘little bit for all’.

As I frantically skipped ahead through the printout of Donohoe’s speech (his is supposed to be the spending and investment part), I realised that there was next to nothing in it of substance for housing or health.

‘They have given up on health and housing,’ I whispered to a colleague. In the days since, I have been unable to find anybody who could persuade me that it is not as shockingly simple as that.

In the chamber, I could see Government TDs and Senators also jumping ahead, nervously seeking a lifeline that, 18 months out (at most) from the next general election, there was something there to fund local health or housing projects. There wasn’t.

The 12th word in Paschal Donohoe’s speech was Brexit. Donohoe became the most ill-suited Director of Elections I’ve seen when he took over the disastrous Fine Gael 2020 general election campaign. He was the prime mover in putting Fine Gael’s Brexit success at the centre of its campaign. An RTÉ 2020 election exit poll showed 1% of voters voted with Brexit as a prime motivating factor. The most important issues for voters, according to the poll taken AFTER they had voted, were health (32%) and housing (26%). Polls since show these two issues rating far higher, and well ahead of everything else. Three-and-a-half years later and truth comes dropping slow for Paschal, it seems.

LAST year’s budget came after an emergency budget in July. McGrath and Donohoe were working under intense political pressure from the public, the media and the opposition over the cost of living. They even held the budget proper earlier, in September.

Yet the Coalition produced what we described here as a political masterpiece. This year the shrill political pressure was absent. Did they get complacent?

Yes, the Budget provided a free hot meal to every pupil in 1,000 primary schools by 2024, and free books for all students up to Junior Cert. There was a €12 across-theboard welfare increase, which is vital for the older voters who vote for Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

Yet McGrath said in his speech that ‘housing is the biggest domestic challenge we face today and remains a priority for Government’. There was also funding for 1,000 new gardaí, but there is ample evidence from Garda sources that recruits don’t want to go to Dublin, as they either can’t find a property to live in or can’t afford it when they do. The same goes for teachers. Even higher-paid professionals can’t find anywhere to live, and multinationals are saying the property crisis is affecting their decisions about Ireland.

So where was the urgency on ‘our biggest domestic challenge’? There isn’t a single new scheme and, astoundingly, no increase to the capital spend at the Department of Housing.

Landlords will be underwhelmed by their tax credit. There was an announcement of €207m for the Croí Cónaithe scheme for cities to bring ‘vacant and derelict units’ back to life for much-needed housing. Those existing schemes are not working.

The overall spend on health this year is down a billion since last year. There will be contortions with bailouts and all, but we do not, again, have an innovative scheme to tackle the glaring problems in the sector. No energy, no urgency. Rinse, repeat.

According to senior sources at the Department of Finance, Donohoe and McGrath have lost all confidence in Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien to execute, so they refused to invest. Similarly, it has been made clear by Donohoe’s camp for months that he planned to put manners on Stephen Donnelly and cost overruns.

Yet, no matter what civil servants and politicians captured by the civil service tell you, there is so much that can be achieved at health and housing, even in a year. What they need is focused investment and even more focused execution. If there is a lack of workers, then move heaven and earth to find them. There are tens of thousands of Ukrainians coming here who would gladly work. Get into all those vacant properties and occupy those unused upper floors of buildings, with every power at your disposal.

This Coalition is marked by drift, substandard ministers and, now, an incoherent Budget caused by diverging political self-interests.

McGrath is one of the most powerful people in Fianna Fáil and that party is plainly tracking towards Sinn Féin. And Donohoe? His performance in the 2020 general election has left him disliked and distrusted by most of his parliamentary party; those who are not getting out before the inevitable denouement won’t follow him.

Even some of Charlie Haughey’s cutest political sleight of hands won’t be enough to save the day.