It’s great craic for TDs, but it’s not politics

While TDs played silly games over buttons, others worked to enlighten us about real politics, writes Gene Kerrigan

WELL, that was entertaining while it lasted, wasn’t it? A fierce row between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

Followed by total disagreement about what the scandal should be called (#votegate, #buttongate, #timmygate, #whateveryou re having yourself gate ).

And, followed, of course, by an equally fierce row between pundits. One crowd saw the voting row as being of major constitutional importance, while the other shower held it to be a load of old cobblers.

Irish politics in a nutshell? Not quite.

Politics is much, much bigger than the occasional row between FF and FG. Politics is about how we live, and how long we live, about what we’re paid for our work. And it’s about who goes to jail for thieving, and who’s lauded as an entrepreneur, with few questions asked about how they got rich.

Last week, I read a report about hospital beds — a crushing political issue.

The shortage of hospital beds has imposed immense pain and distress on many and prematurely killed off countless more.

And that academic paper reveals a huge political development that occurred with hardly any reference whatever to Dail Eireann.

Meanwhile, last week the Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection heard evidence about a widespread crime from which the political establishment have resolutely averted their gaze.

Not a bad week, then. Hard evidence on the health scandal. Hard evidence on the bogus self-employment scam. Both issues politicians seek to avoid. And — the icing on the political cake — #buttongate.

Two major political issues and a bit of light relief — and which of these dominated the headlines?

Here’s another question: how many private, for-profit, hospital beds were there in this country in 1980?

None. Zero, zilch. Not so much as a private trolley.

Privatisation in the Irish Hospital Sector Since 1980 is a paper researched by Julian Mercille, an academic at UCD. It compiles figures for public, not-for-profit and for-profit beds for every year between 1980 and

2015. Without such detailed information, public health debate is pointless.

Between 1980 and 2015, there was a drop of 25pc in the total number of inpatient beds.

And where there had been no private beds whatever, by 2015, there were 1,075.

And there were 1,033 fewer public beds. We had established a two-tier system.

Don’t you remember those tumultuous political debates, with the Dail sitting late into the night, as our political leaders tussled with the difficult issue of whether we should change from a public health system to a two-tier system?

No, neither do I.

A major political change in the make-up of the health system evolved with no real reference to public debate. Things would have happened much the same if the Dail had not existed.

As the religious orders declined, and they couldn’t continue managing the hospitals, private investors took their place. Public policy, the provision of hospital beds, was to be guided not solely by health needs but by the demand for profit.

Oh well, so we’re down from a total of 16,629 inpatient beds to 12,383. No big deal. Modern medical advances mean less need for beds, don’t they?

Yes, somewhat — but the population over that period went up from 3.4m to 4.7m. We used to have 4.8 beds per 1,000 of us; now we have 2.6 per 1,000.

That’s why your elderly aunt frets on a trolley for 28 hours; and it’s why your son’s urgent operation might happen sometime in the next four years.

The role of politicians in such matters is limited to providing subsidies to the health insurance industry, via tax reliefs. Mercille calculates that in 2012 alone, that cost us €448m.

Meanwhile, the Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection heard evidence from Martin McMahon, who for years has been campaigning on bogus self-employment.

This crime is rampant across various industries. It has found a natural home in that area of modern life with the hip name, “the gig economy”.

Social insurance is part of the wage we get when we work. The employer pays into the central fund so that if and when we need a safety net, it will be there for us.

Some bosses decide there’s no need to pay into social insurance — all you had to do was reclassify the worker as an “independent contractor”.

And, no, the part of the wage that should go into social insurance is not given to the worker — it’s reclassified as profit and pocketed by the boss. So, money stolen from the state and no safety net for the worker.

This is criminal. It deprives the state of immeasurable sums of money — Martin McMahon calculates it’s in the hundreds of millions — and it takes hard-won rights away from the worker.

The provision of public services, including critical health services, is a very serious matter. The rights of workers and the stealing of money that’s due to the state purse, this too is serious.

Yet it takes individuals, hammering away at the issues, to get it into the public eye. And how far will the politicians run with this?

The truth is, as anyone who knows politicians is aware, there are wide differences among them. Some have passionate beliefs about some issues — some have got themselves into a well-paying job and they spend most of their time manoeuvring to ensure they hold onto the seat at the next election.

Reading the official report of Dail proceedings in the wake of the #buttongate scandal was depressing. There was more than one bloody eejit on his feet on each side of the FG/FF argument. They chattered, trying for a little kick at the other crowd, until they got tired of the game. The parties now seem to want to bury the matter quickly, as it damages both of them.

Look, #buttongate is simple.

Many TDs are lazy. They don’t like sitting around, hearing stuff read out, and then remembering to vote as they’ve been instructed by their whips.

So, they mooch around, they go for a walk, they call their bookie — I don’t know, they somehow put down the time, and then they can feck off and play Candy Crush or whatever else they get up to in the privacy of their offices.

And, as a result of this laziness, some of them got into the habit of pressing other people’s buttons, to cover for their mates.

When this was spotted by the Independent, some TDs hurriedly came up with stories that were as credible as the average election manifesto. Full of holes.

Amazingly, as the days went by, the stories adjusted themselves — the “facts” were finessed, accounts began aligning with each other, to enhance credibility.

It crossed my mind that there’s a good story in forensically examining each of those yarns and how they changed, but — honestly — who gives a damn?

In the course of the debate, Catherine Connolly, Independent TD from Galway West, pointed out that she’d had three minutes to talk about the fact that Galway Hospital had 38 people waiting for beds that day. Yet, the Dail could squander a lot more time on the #buttongate issue.

Is there any wonder there have been major changes to public health for which the politicians were mere spectators?

There’s a serious deficit of seriousness in the Dail.

And we in the media too often take it at face value. We accept shallow, silly behaviour, pointless slagging, and we call it politics.

‘Between 1980 and 2015, there was a drop of 25pc in inpatient beds’