Politics

Quality 1: He is very bright

Introduction

In the 13 years since the Devlin Report was published on the reform of the public service, none of its recommendations have been implemented, bar the settng up of another Department. In the period, the number of public servants has doubled and the cost of their pay and pensions is not £2,391m, almost half of all public expenditure.

The country is facing the most serious crisis since independence. Yet in it's eight months the last Dail met on only 51 days. The summer recess ran from 16 July to 27 October. Of the 166 TDs elected last February, more than 20 contributed not a word to a debate. Only about half made more than five contributions.

Since the February election Charlie Haughey has suffered from a series of "grotesque, unprecedented, bizarre and unbelievable" (to use his own characterisation of the Connolly affair, a phrase immortalised by Conor Cruise O'Brien by its initials, GUBU) events which have undermined his own credibility and that of his Government. The following is the complete GUBU list.

The public is entitled to know precisely what it is voting for in the case of each of the political parties.

Can Dick Spring pull Labour out of its nosedive after O'Malley has baled out? 

Among the many who left the soporific Labour Party conference in Galway convinced that the party needed a good shake-up were Dick Spring, Liam Kavanagh and Eileen Desmond. On the Wednesday following the conference they went to party leader Michael O'Leary and told him it was time to get his act together. The shake-up which followed wasn't quite what they had in mind. Somewhat disturbed by the approach, O'Leary brooded for a day, then abruptly resigned from the leadership and the party.

In his now famous television address of Wednesday January 9, 1980, within a month of becoming Taoiseach, Charles Haughey told the nation in solemn tones:

" ... we have been living at a rate which is simply not justified by the amount of goods and services we are producing. To make up the difference we have been borrowing enormous amounts of money, borrowing at a rate which just cannot continue. A few simple figures will make this very clear."

Charlie Haughey has been reviled for his extraordinary post election deal with Tony Gregory. But Garret FitzGerald negotiated a deal only slightly less extraordinary.

There is an inbuilt bias in the constituency size and boundary redrawing of 1980 in favour of Fine Gael.