A Budget like tapas... a bit of everything but nothing substantial!
SPAIN is spotless. I got home yesterday after 11 days spent first in Mallorca, then San Pedro de Alcántara near Marbella, and one night in Málaga, and was struck by how clean the streets were. Driving in the countryside too, there was no sign of fly tipping, no plastic bags hanging from hedges, no paper cups, sweet wrappers or banana skins flung from car windows.
There are, no doubt, many reasons for this, but a simple one leapt out – there are bins everywhere. It got me thinking about Ireland, and how few bins we now seem to have compared to when I was a child and those Litter/Bruscar bins seemed to be attached to almost every lamppost. I suspect I know the answer. If we had as many bins as the Spaniards do, someone would have to empty them, and so we just don’t bother. The attitude, as always, is ‘sure it’ll do’.
Inspirational
And that, as it happens, pretty much is exactly the message Tuesday’s Budget put out too. It’s not like there are many surprises in annual budgets nowadays, because the Fiscal Advisory Council runs the slide rule over major policy decisions first, and we find out everything else in advance thanks to the Kildare Street colander. I still always live in hope, though, that one inspirational decision will be slipped in at the last minute. I’d love one idea that would be a gamechanger, in the way free secondary education for all laid the foundation for the skilled workforce that attracted so much foreign direct investment, even though that was a solo run by Donogh O’Malley.
The Government’s Housing For All plan will hardly have gained any momentum at all by the time of the next election, because we have too few apprentices and too few qualified construction workers since so many from Eastern Europe went home during lockdown and never returned.
The very crisis they were helping to solve actually made Ireland too expensive for them to live here too. With their own economies emerging from pandemic stasis, staying at home had a new attraction.
Instead of a big idea like, say, free pre-school childcare for all, the Government instead signed off on what, in another analogy that struck me in Spain, was a tapas Budget. As it happens, I rather like tapas, all those small saucers of fried potatoes, salads, calamari, and so on. They’re tasty, yes, and maybe even filling, but you never really feel you’ve had a full dinner. Well, I don’t anyway, because for me, dinner has more meat and lots of gravy, and this Budget certainly didn’t deliver either of those.
The way ministers were queuing up to suggest it was wonderful just showed how profoundly out of touch they are. What little extra cash might find its way into our wallets will be lost to inflation. Between recent increases at the pumps and the rise in carbon tax, petrol costs alone will nullify the benefits for many with longer commutes.
There were outcries from all sorts of sectional interests, from hospitality businesses annoyed that the 9% VAT rate is guaranteed only until next August, to students who find it too expensive or simply impossible to secure accommodation, to farmers who feel they are not being sufficiently rewarded for their contribution to reducing agricultural emissions.
As a sop to college students, half-price fares will apply to public transport up to the age of 24, and while that is no doubt welcome, it hardly is a big idea.
A big idea would be something like Luxembourg did, actually making all public transport free for everyone. If anything is going to get people out of their cars, it is a real saving on the cost of a commute.
No doubt ministers believe that in putting some cash back in students’ wallets, they will halt the drift of that cohort to the parties of the left, but that significantly fails to recognise that the young are idealistic anyway, and by definition anti-establishment. Anyone who has ever argued at the kitchen table into the wee small hours with a son or daughter, niece or nephew, knows this. Indeed, we once were those youngsters ourselves, before we realised who picked up the tab for much of the free stuff, just by looking in the mirror.
The next election is officially over three years away, but when the baton of Taoiseach passes from Micheál Martin to Leo Varadkar next year, it is not hard to see a certain scenario played out. Already, Fianna Fáil has suffered in the polls for being part of the Covid Coalition to a much greater extent than Fine Gael. To reclaim its identity, it could quite easily engineer a redline situation to bolster its independent credentials and withdraw from government, sending the country to the polling booths early.
Nothing in this Budget will convince anyone that either party has the wit or the imagination to do anything different, anything breathtaking, anything that will define life for a new generation.
And, in the absence of that, many will ditch the better-the devil-you-know attitude and take a chance on something different, something new, something that looks appealing.
I’m not betting the house on it, but in giving a little to everyone without making any imaginative gesture, this Budget might well have paved the way for Taoiseach McDonald.