Terry McGeehan SLICING THROUGH THE SPIN EVERY MONDAY LET’S END THIS REIGN OF ERROR Gormless Government must learn from its mistakes
WHY is Ireland so badly run?
Why do we pay bog-standard politicians big bucks to do a mediocre job?
Why do they never learn from their mistakes?
And why do we elect them over and over again — to make the same mistakes over and over again?
Here we are at the start of winter facing the twindemic of flu and Covid — and the very real scenario of suffering this latest scourge in the cold and dark.
But it could’ve all been avoided if previous lessons had been learnt and proper action taken.
But we’re all mad, you see — all mad, according to Albert Einstein’s theory that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
We must break the cycle or we’re doomed to make the same mistakes forever.
Bitter
Back in the bitter winter of 2010, our roads became ice rinks, pipes burst, schools closed and transport slid to a halt.
And guess what — there was barely a grain of salt or grit to spread on the roads, despite earlier forecasts of freezing weather from Malin to Mizen.
And the last straw was the absence of Transport Minister Noel Dempsey, who took most of the flak for our lack of preparation — even though the entire Cabinet was at fault. He was on holidays in sunny Malta. But has our political establishment learnt anything from the calamity of winter 2010?
Not on your nelly.
Here we are again just 12 years later, quaking at the prospect of winter 2022 with dire predictions of fourhour blackouts affecting 125,000 households.
No doubt there’s no shortage of grit and salt — or maybe not.
But where are the giant generators we were supposed to have in case of crisis?
Where is the liquefied natural gas that we should have stored in massive tanks to see us through the winter months — come hail, rain or Vladimir poxy Putin?
Where are the mountain-high stockpiles of smokeless fuels to keep the home fires burning?
And it’s not as if the powers-thatbe weren’t warned about how exposed we’d be to disaster if we didn’t act in time.
It’s reported that our energy watchdog was warned six years ago that we were at serious risk of blackouts and big bills.
But no-one learned the simple, straightforward, easy-peasy lessons of 2010, as articulated by the great Roy Keane — “if you fail to prepare, then prepare to fail”.
And the same goes exactly for our public health service.
We’ve now been warned that our hospitals could be like bedlam this winter with a surge in Covid along with a particularly nasty type of flu.
And all against a backdrop of staff shortages, trolley shortages, bed shortages, and the sheer exhaustion of the remaining dedicated staff who — miraculously — we’ve managed to hold on to.
But what’s new?
Hole
The trolley/bed/staff crises are so old now that they’re a part of what we are — as Irish as Guinness, the shamrock, the harp, Ole Ole Ole, Paddy’s Day, Amhran na bhFiann, Croke Park, the Angelus, the Old Bog Road and the Late Late Show.
But despite €21 billion of our taxes being shovelled into the public health black hole, we still end up with a service that strikes the fear of God into patients and staff.
And then there’s housing.
It costs a mint to rent or buy — just like it did before the boom.
And look how that ended up.