Public Services Card can drive efficiency – but also help us plan properly for future
“Caesar issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. Joseph went from the town of Nazareth to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.”
Luke 2.1
THE tricky business of counting how many people live in a country is, literally, as old as the Bible itself. So it may just be timely, 2,000 years later, to reflect on any government trying to plan ahead for the various needs of its people if it doesn’t know how many people they are actually planning for?
The reason I say this is that I believe our recent census understates our population by as much as 200,000. I say this because I think it significantly overstates the numbers of vacant households.
I understand that it is very hard to count how many people there are in a dynamic society like Ireland’s and we may always struggle to plan properly for our future needs, but this is why I think that the widest use of the Public Services Card (PSC) is not just desirable but an urgent public policy requirement.
The legitimate challenges about data safety and personal freedoms are all surmountable while the public good of knowing exactly how many people are in the State blows out of the water any arguments not to embrace the PSC.
Linked to this very practical challenge of finding out how many people are living here, and how many households are vacant, is the planned roll-out of smart metering from 2019 onwards. These smart meters will help customers save money on their bill but also potentially allow us identify accurately how many households are vacant in the State.
The relevance of both the PSC issue and smart metering is highlighted by my belief that the
2016 Census overstated the number of vacant properties in the State by over 100,000 and, as a result, underestimated the population by up to
200,000. The numbers are buried a little in the final Census report but they stand out a mile when one considers the state of the property market today.
The Census suggests that of the
1,931,497 households in the State, there were 183,312 vacant properties, indicating that roughly one in 10 properties were vacant. At a time of double-digit growth in prices and rents, it just doesn’t seem logical that property owners would leave their valuable assets sitting idle. By contrast, in the rental market, according to Census and Daft.ie figures, the vacancy rate is just over one property in 100, or 3,637 properties for rent out of a total of 326,493 privately rented households in the State.
I don’t believe there are 180,000 empty properties in the State and thankfully Minister Eoghan Murphy didn’t either. Before the Budget he told media that, on closer examination by the CSO, there were actually just 20,000 vacant properties, or a vacancy rate similar to the 1pc figure in the rental market. Now that seems much more realistic.
This intervention by Mr Murphy helped avoid the introduction of a pointless ‘use it or lose it’ property tax, but still leaves behind 100,000 or more properties that have been incorrectly labelled as vacant. If they are not vacant and each property has just two people living in it – the national average is 2.7 – that gives us the 200,000 population understatement I mentioned earlier.
We are fortunate to have such a professional and respected body as the CSO that manages national data like this, but this potentially exposes the increasing challenges of collating returns from large swathes of new apartment developments, the irregular hours that people are at home, the remoteness of many properties, the disinclination to answer the door after dark unless someone has rung ahead, or any number of other reasons. Which brings us back to the kernel of the problem; how do we better quantify who is living in the State so that we can deliver better policies and better government?
I don’t see why everyone living in the State, not just the three million issued to date, would not have a PSC as part of the individual’s engagement with the State that they live in. I am persuaded by the comments of both Social Protection Minister Regina Doherty (inset left) and the Data Protection Commissioner that the legal basis for the card is sound and that the data protection issues are manageable.
WHAT is actually wrong with each person in the State having a card that they maybe renew biannually, for their kids as appropriate, in the same way that one renews health or home insurance, Netflix service or a gym membership?
In my time in government, I was
hugely struck by the multiplicity of programmes, schemes and interfaces the citizen has with the system and how complex and bureaucratic it is. Having one card that allows you process all your engagements with the State while driving internal efficiency improvements in government, while also helping plan better for the future, is a big prize to aim for.
In parallel to that is the issue of identifying vacant households using techniques with obvious limitations. The planned roll-out of smart metering in 2019 to
2.3 million households offers the possibility to definitively identify which properties are vacant and which are just inaccessible or unresponsive to an unscheduled evening caller. This type of information needs to be closely managed and protected but should be used to help drive further public policy improvements.
Finally, a thought about the future public policy effects of a possible miscalculation in the Census in 2016. The Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), soon to become the Labour Force Survey, is a core source of data for policy makers and analysts alike, but its base of reference is the Census. In addition, its methodology has centred on door-to-door interviews (about 27,000). If there are significant numbers of households that decline to answer or are inaccessible for one reason or another there remains a risk, using this methodology, that this cohort of the population will be excluded from any future analysis.
Parliamentary democracy is a two-way contract between the citizen and the assembly they elect. We entrust those we elect to govern in our interests and, if unhappy with their performance, we can reject them next time out.
Better governance must be about a closer collaboration and engagement between citizen and administration in between those moments when we all get to vote for our preferred candidate or party. Part of that closer ongoing collaboration, and attendant two-way accountability, is working out exactly how many people there are in the State so that we can make better decisions today and, crucially, plan for the years ahead.
It’s a challenge at least 2,000 years old, but one I think that’s not beyond our reach. And it doesn’t require another Christmas miracle to achieve it.
Legitimate challenges about data safety and personal freedoms are all surmountable