‘Vote-grabbing’ ideas may have opposite effect

EINSTEIN famously said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The line is one of Einstein’s best known and most quoted but it would seem it is not one that has found its way into Fine Gael’s government offices.

At the last General Election – and particularly in the wake of the Government’s disastrous ‘Keep the Recovery Going’ campaign – Fine Gael were routinely accused of ignoring rural Ireland and the, so called, squeezed middle who are still enduring a torrid time eight years on from the economic crash.

Following two internal post mortems into the reasons for Fine Gael’s shambolic election campaign, many in the party and the wider electorate were hoping that sense and reason may have prevailed. Going on the last few weeks it seems such optimism may have been a little premature.

As they prepare their budget – one of the most difficult in the history of the state given the current make up of Leinster House – Enda Kenny’s Government has proposed two new policies that have again outraged vast swathes of the electorate.

The first of these was the laudable but extremely short sighted proposal that a special reduced tax rate should be introduced to encourage highly qualified emigrants to come home.

That idea is noble in itself but – as Enda Kenny agreed in the Dáil – it would be grossly unfair to the millions of people who stayed in Ireland and endured the worst ravages of the recession.

These people – some who were unable to escape and find opportunities abroad and others who simply wanted to stay in their home country – should not be discriminated against and, predictably, the suggestion of a special emigrants’ tax rate was met with barely disguised fury from many hard pressed Irish workers.

It is easy to see where the genesis of the idea came from given the enormous impact returning highly skilled emigrants had in kick starting the Irish economy in the Celtic Tiger years.

However, the situation Ireland is now in is very different from those heady days. When the last generation of emigrants were coming home, Ireland was in the early days of a boom.

Now, while things have improved, Ireland is still mired in economic uncertainty. It will take a lot more than a relatively modest tax break to encourage our diaspora to come home.

The second highly controversial measure that has actually been introduced – albeit on a pilot basis in recent weeks – concerns the issue of medical cards, specifically medical cards for prisoners.

Under the new scheme all prisoners will be automatically granted a medical card on leaving prison with the card supposed to be in their letter boxes by the time they get home from jail.

While the scheme only applies to prisoners who would be entitled to a card anyway – wealthier prisoners still won’t be entitled – the fact that their applications will be sped up and facilitated by the HSE has, quite rightly, infuriated thousands of families.

Thanks to the scheme – currently being piloted in Cork Prison – prisoners should be able to get their medical cards far faster than law abiding applicants, many of whom spend months or even years dealing with red tape. The notion that an ill, elderly and impoverished person could get their medical card faster by spending time in jail is nothing short of appalling.

Such issues certainly affect huge swathes of voters but will there be a different result come polling day?