Cabinet blockheads need to learn some concrete lessons
THERE is ample and concrete evidence now (and not just for the obvious reason) that the kind of tin ear syndrome that in Britain has nearly destroyed Liz Truss’s premiership before it even began continues to afflict the leaders of our own historic Coalition government as well.
Of course, the most fascinating thing about political tone-deafness is that the smarter the offender, the more acutely it presents.
The most striking recent example of that is British chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, a super-charged brainbox but without a stem of common sense and no idea at all about how regular people think. Kwarteng has been a high achiever all his life, attending Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, during which he won more medals than Prince Andrew displayed on his civvy-street suit marching behind his mother’s coffin recently.
The politically idiotic chancellor then studied at Harvard before returning to Old Blighty and rounding it all off with a PhD in economic history (Jaysus, he mustn’t have been paying much attention) at the University of Cambridge.
DESPITE all that, Kwarteng filleted his reputation and that of Liz Truss with his mini-budget, his very first test. Now, despite his humiliating withdrawal of huge tax cuts for the filthy rich, tens of thousands of people throughout Britain cannot get a house mortgage as fixed-term interest rates shoot past 6% for the first time since the crash 14 years ago.
Here, Coalition leaders Micheál Martin (UCC), Leo Varadkar (Trinity College) and Eamon Ryan (Gonzaga boy) have all benefited from the best of what our education system provides. All three, however, must have been as láthair or staring absent-mindedly out the window when the lesson titled ‘how not to mess up an otherwise acceptable budget’ was being taught.
The 10% concrete levy introduced in last month’s budget to help pay for the mica blocks disaster, which will cost at least €2.7billion, has left everybody with an extremely irritating pebble in the shoe, seeing as how the budget was designed to tackle inflation, not add to it. Further, the levy was counterintuitive, targeting ambitious young people trying to build or buy their own homes, the kind of people Leo Varadkar has been trying to attract, those who get up early in the morning and form part of the squeezed middle.
The Government’s insistence that the construction industry must help pay the cost of the mica crisis is patent nonsense, since everybody knows that the entire levy will be passed on and paid for by innocent people building homes and others, such as farmers, who need concrete to develop and improve their businesses.
LABOUR leader Ivana Bacik’s preference for a mica levy on construction profits is equally risible, considering that such a tax would, without any doubt whatsoever, also be passed on in full to consumers by way of higher prices. The same applies to Sinn Féin’s suggestion of a broad-based levy to include non-life insurance companies and banks. The party’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin said they supported a levy spread as widely as possible in order to minimise any impact on individual homeowners. Stunningly, he also said that, firstly, the Government should seek a voluntary contribution. Is he having a laugh or what?
Fact is, the mica disaster is the result of light or zero State regulation of the building industry. That’s where the fault and complete responsibility lies. Unfortunately, taxpayers must now pay the price for the State’s wilful refusal to impose strict standards, that refusal the result of politicians and decision-makers being more interested in cosying up to builders and bankers rather than protecting the interests of regular people.
Introducing the concrete levy was a serious misstep by a coalition government too smart to read the room. But there are now clear signs of a row-back, with Fianna Fáil setting up a committee to discuss the levy and talk of a postponement in the air.
The lessons of history tell us that when levies are introduced, they tend to become less temporary and more permanent.
Almost 40 years ago then-Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, also a noted brainbox, intervened on behalf of the State to save AIB when its subsidiary, the Insurance Corporation of Ireland collapsed with debts of over IR£200m.
No lessons were learned. In the intervening years more insurance companies crashed and burned, and so did the banks – and again the taxpayers were forced to dig deep into light pockets.
This concrete levy won’t fix the construction industry, because that’ll only be achieved by the iron fist of rigid resgulation.
To put that in place doesn’t take much brains, just political will.