Regulation is pivotal to sale of state assets
ANYBODY wishing for a to-do list from Colm McCarthy was probably disappointed yesterday. The laconic UCD academic's report is long on detail but short on concrete recommendations beyond general warnings about selling assets too cheaply, too quickly or too slowly.
Frustratingly, the report makes no attempt to value the State's assets beyond reporting their book values -- a fairly meaningless metric -- which makes it difficult for the public or ministers to judge what is worth selling. Nobody would sell their house or car without enquiring first about the value and nor should the Government.
The value of the country's assets is now so small relative to its liabilities that it will be tempting for the coalition partners to paper over their differences by ignoring the divisive issue almost entirely. Privatisations are tricky; those on the right and the left can object to the sale of strategic assets such as the ports and the railways for different reasons. Industrial action is almost a given.
Fine Gael and Labour have committed themselves to raising €2bn, but to only reach this rather miserly target would be to waste a crisis. It has long been clear that semi-state profits are too low while salaries are too high. In some cases, the senior management and their pampered employees have been effectively looting their companies to a degree that has rendered them almost valueless despite decades of investment. Semi-state bodies were initially created to combine the private sector's zeal with the public sector's sense of duty, but yesterday's report all too often paints an ugly picture of private sector greed and public sector inefficiency.
It is for this reason that the argument could be made that state assets should be sold or closed where adequate alternatives exist. It can also be argued that there is no particular reason for the State to cut turf, compete to drive coaches between our major cities or build flashy airport terminals. We do it because we have always done it. Most of our neighbours have long since given up the day-to-day provision of such services. However, we should follow in their footsteps when, and only when, we have developed mechanisms to supervise new service providers.
The State has been remarkably poor at providing even the simplest services and there is every reason to believe that commercial organisations can do the job in future if they are regulated properly. Proper regulation is a vital caveat; poor regulation of the banks has already brought this country to its knees. Poor regulation of transport and energy providers could do the same. There can be no room for regulators who are too detached or plain lazy. It is an age-old problem: who will watch the watchdogs? No asset should be sold until we resolve this conundrum.
Children deserve better
THE cases reviewed in the report by the Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO) make for sad reading -- not to mention the tragic young suicide highlighted in a separate report yesterday.
The OCO report, prepared by Dr Ursula Kilkelly, senior law lecturer at University College Cork, also uses blunt language of a kind not usually found in Irish reports on public services.
It talks of "faceless, bureaucratic" decision making, which seems to apply policy without any real connection to the situation. The Children's Ombudsman, Emily Logan, expressed concern about a lack of awareness in civil and public administration of how quickly children can be damaged by depriving them of education or separating them from family.
This speaks to a situation which requires serious attention. It will add to the public feeling of unease, which stems from the worst, and therefore the most publicised cases, that the social services are failing in child care.
Yet the welfare of children in distress is one of the most difficult of all administrative issues. We do not believe it lends itself entirely to the mantra, emphasised again in yesterday's report, that the interests of the child are central.
Justice Catherine McGuinness, who was part of the review group, may have come closest when she said the rules were often applied rigidly, so that the officials would not get into trouble for breaking them.
Finding a way to let people interpret rules more flexibly, without them getting into even more trouble if things go wrong will be a daunting task, but is one worth trying.
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