I’m going to claim partial credit for that idea.  I can’t remember whether I actually said it to Ruairi himself, but I was punting the idea around the Labour Party backrooms for a couple of weeks before I left for Canada.  Here’s some of the flesh I put on the bones of the idea while talking to people about it.

From East Lothian Museum (licenced under Creative Commons)

Why a Minister?

So why do you need a Minister for public sector reform?  Why not a committee or a working group or even just a Junior Minister?  The reason for this is that in order for the Public Service to both respect and cooperate with the process, and for the person in question to be able to legislate (both primary & secondary) at will, a cabinet level post is required.  This also stops, or at least hinders, interference from other Ministers. 

Who that Minister should be is a different matter, but it would need to be someone with a very good idea of what they wanted, the determination (and vision) to see it through, and a strong two-way respect for/from the public service as a whole.  Preferably, it should be a TD who’s not going to run for election again – this avoids too much personal risk entering the decision-making equation.

This Department Will Self-Destruct in…

Public service reform of the type we’re envisaging here isn’t an ongoing process.  This is a once-a-generation type of change we’re looking at.  Smaller, incremental change should be ongoing, (and the bigger process must create systems that facilitate it) but this is the time – and the opportunity – for major structural change.

Because of this, it’s important to give the proposed Department of Public Service Reform a predetermined lifetime.  Five years, being the normal lifetime of a Government (all going well), would be appropriate.  It’s long enough to hopefully avoid procrastination and “waiting them out”, but short enough that there’s a visible endline at all times.

The staff (more to follow) hired for the Department should be on five year contracts or secondments.  Those not already Civil Servants should not become Civil Servants in the old sense of the term (job for life, etc), but should of course have decent terms and conditions.

Civil Servants Deciding Public Sector Reform?

As I’m sure readers are already mentally pointing out, establishing a Government Department of Public Service Reform will mean having a building full of civil servants doing the work.  The people who best understand the public sector are public servants themselves.  But they’re also an interested party – some interested in strong reform, others interested in the status quo.  Group theory would suggest that in large numbers they’ll tend towards the latter.

So yes, you need civil servants working in this hypothetical Department.  But you also need to bring in people from the wider public service and from the non-public sector.  I’d say that your ideal mix would have the analysis/decision-making units of the Department made up of civil servants, other public servants and non-public sector people (be they from academia, private sector, NGOs or elsewhere).  It would also include people from each of those sectors (civil/public/non) from other countries.  The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand should be considered just as much as European nations.

The civil servants assigned to this Department should be hand selected from the best and brightest in the rest of the public sector.  They should be recruited by the new Department, not sent to it because they’re an inconvenience or of no use to their previous Department (as is alleged to so often happen in the Irish public service).

A mix like this would, hopefully, allow for some creative thinking while taking into account how the public service actually works in practice.

Bringing it all together

With a good Minister and the active cooperation of other Government Ministers, such a Department could be making a real difference in a realatively short time.  Its remit should be broad enough to allow for service improvements, quality control improvements and cost-beneficial additions as well as cost cutting.

But, I hear you cry, the Unions would never allow it.  Not right now they wouldn’t.  And that’s why one or more parties needs to run into the next General Election with a policy like this (in about as much detail as I’ve given) clearly laid out.

While the Unions might complain about such proposals, and some of the consequential reforms, being brought in off the cuff, it’s a different ball game altogether when there’s a clear mandate in place from the people.  One might take one’s chances on industrial action when there’s no clear mandate.  But if the people have spoken clearly, they’re not going to take withdrawl of any services well.

So, what we need is:

• A Minister for Public Service Reform
• A Department that only lasts 5 years
• Lots of non-civil servants staffing that Department
• Wide-ranging powers and terms of reference
• An election

Shouldn’t be a problem, then.

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Now, where did I put my maple syrup, eh?

(Oh, and don’t worry – I’m not actually up at 2am posting this, I scheduled it so it would go out during daylight Irish time)

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Fianna Fáil, and the Government as a whole, now has two stark choices in front of it following the publication of the report of An Bord Snip Nua. Ministers can implement it word for word, cut for cut, job loss for job loss, or they can dump the whole thing. Any position between the two will bring them to an unbearable conflux of competing interest groups, protest and ultimately an appearance of weakness.

First cut is the deepest

Fianna Fáil’s problems haven’t started yet. The revelation of the full scale of the recommendations (whatever your thoughts as to whether they go too far, not far enough or are about right) has caused various interest groups to decry their own perceived unfair cuts.

But it will be the first backtrack that really begins the hurt. The first time that Brian Lenihan or Brian Cowen caves on some aspect of the recommendations, no matter how minor, will start a deluge of similar claims, talk of favouritism and demands that “we be heard”. “The <publicans/civil servants/farmers/quangos> are having their side taken”, another interest group will say. “Now, all we need to do is push harder and harder until the Government listens to our side.”

A road forked…

Fianna Fáil’s two options are to condemn the entire report (and therefore probably the Government finances for another year or two until they can come up with something better) or to implement it in its entirity.

The former allows individual groups to be placated, but runs the extremely dangerous risk that the public won’t wash a further abrogation of duty on behalf of the party they see as having brought Ireland to this breaking point. It also likely means that whatever cuts are made further down the line will have to be even tougher in order to make up for the time lost between now and then.

The latter means invoking the ire of every interest group in the country, and likely most voters on an individual level. However, it offers the only escape clause in the contract. By implementing the recommendations in their entirity and without so much as a comma changed, the Government can deflect some of that ire onto Colm McCarthy and his colleagues. “It was the economists what done it,” Brian Cowen will say. “Sure we had no choice.”

The middle ground between the former and the latter is a politically deadly minefield that could not be crossed by even the luckiest of sappers.

Feeling lucky, punk?

You might think that blaming the report’s authors wouldn’t get past the voting public, and it probably wouldn’t. But it would at least give the fig leaf required for the more ardent Fianna Fáilers to continue supporting and voting for the party.

It’s been Fianna Fáil’s approach to the health service for some years now. In fact, they created a situation where they have two people to blame: the HSE takes the first hit, and, if the clever voter spots that the HSE answers to the Government, sure “it was them PDs and that terrible Harney woman” who set it up and are in charge of it now. Nothing to do with Fianna Fáil, who only wish they could get their hands on Health again to sort it out. Damn those PDs. (This was most recently displayed when Micheál Martin objected to his own Government’s plans to build a private hospital on the grounds of the University Hospital in Cork.)

Proof of Concept

Any change to the recommendations, no matter how small, admits that those recommendations can be changed. And that would be fatal to the “a big boy told me to do it” plea.

Fianna Fáil got us into this economic mess. They got us into this fiscal mess. They’ve now gotten themselves into this Bord Snip mess. Will they be any more successful at getting out of that?

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Seanad Éireann

Under Seanad by-election rules, only members of the Oireachtas, and not Councillors, may vote this time.

Here’s the maths:

The starting tally in the vote would be:

Senators:
FF 27 Senators
FG 15 Senators (14 + Colm O’Gorman Ciaran Cannon)
LAB 5 Senators (6 – Alan Kelly)
PD 1 Senators (Fiona O’Malley, who can be expected to go FF, probably)
GRN 2 Senators (who can be expected to go FF)
SF 1 Senator
OTH 7 Senators (of which, 3 can, on a good day & with the right candidates, likely be expected to go LAB [Norris, Bacik, O'Toole], 2 FG [Ross, F Quinn], 1 FF [Harris], 1 unknown [Mullen])

Giving a final Seanad tally of:
FF 31
FG 17
LAB 8
2 unknown

TDs:
FF 77 TDs (78 – Seamus Brennan)
FG 52 TDs (51 + George Lee)
LAB 20 TDs
PD 2 TDs (who can be expected to go FF)
GRN 6 TDs (who can be expected to go FF)
SF 4 TDs
OTH 5 TDs (of which, 2 can likely be expected to go FF [Healy-Rae, Cooper-Flynn], remainder unknown)

Giving a final TDs tally of:
FF 87
FG 52
LAB 20
10 unknown

This then gives:
Overall Tally:
FF 87 + 31 = 118
FG 52 + 17 = 69
LAB 20 + 8 = 28
Unknown 10 + 2 = 12 (including Sinn Féin)

We’ll skip past the unknowns for a moment. We’ll now consider that FG and Labour would be likely to field combined candidates in each race (presumably one FG and one LAB):

Revised Tally:
FF 118
FG/LAB 69 + 28 = 97
Unknown = 12

Even allowing for all the unknowns (Sinn Féin, Independents and Senator Ronan Mullen) to jump in with Fine Gael and Labour, that only brings their total to 109. Allow for the Ceann Comhairle and the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad to choose not to cast votes (I’m not sure of the protocol on that), and you bring the FF total down to 116. That’s 7 votes short of what would be needed to beat an FF candidate.

So, you’d need four TDs or Senators on the Fianna Failure side to jump ship to the FG/LAB side in order to change the result. Or, seven FF-pool (i.e. including FF gene pool independents, Greens and PD) TDs or Senators to fail to submit a ballot paper.

It’s not impossible, but very very unlikely.

For the record, my bets on Fianna Failure’s nominees are former Lord Mayor of Dublin and European Parliament candidate Eibhlin Byrne (presumably she ran for Europe on the promise of a Seanad seat) and former MEP Eoin Ryan (unless the Andrews family can stop him – he’ll be wanting a run in Dublin South East against Chris Andrews next time out, and would likely beat him to a pulp in any contest).

Update:

It’s Ciaran Cannon, not Colm O’Gorman, of course.  Thanks Mick & Eoin for pointing that out!

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Took a bit longer to get back to blogging than expected, due to a bug in the upgrade of Wordpress, but all sorted now.

Childers Election Poster

A few online things to note from the campaign – Liveblogs and Twitter really came to life during the counts & results phase.  IrishElection.com did brilliantly at that stage.  The weakness of these media is still there, though: there’s no way of knowing what the reliability of the source is.  In the noise, there are great, solid sources (like your correspondant), and sources that are full of shite (like the Libertas spinners).  However, that applied equally to RTÉ, who occasionally got their announcements wrong.

Blogs, Facebook and YouTube didn’t have much effect on the campaign.  Having talked to a few internet-enabled politicos who were managing candidate websites, the traffic levels on election day and the few days before were higher than normal, but still in the low hundreds region at the highest.

I’m off to Canada in a month’s time (via DC), where the possibility of an election can’t be discounted.  July 27th is the date they’re theorising about, which would give me a good week of campaigning!

On another note, check out my little brother’s blog – he’s travelling around Asia on the way to Australia, and has just completed a 21-day trek in the Himalayas.

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Medium size (which seems to work best for Twitter profile images):

Small:

Feel free to use as you wish.  This is a copy of something someone else did, remade with the higher res versions of the logo.

Update:

By popular demand, here’s a version that works as a Facebook logo too.

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“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

No, it’s not Marx, it’s the Father of Capitalism, Adam Smith, in ‘The Wealth of Nations‘. It’s here in context (para I.10.82).

Blogging is going to be very infrequent for the next month due to the European Elections!

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First up, the results of a new poll (English translation) undertaken in Poland on the European Elections campaign.  This was carried out by the local branch of TNS/MRBI (TNS/OBOP in Poland), so we can expect it to be fairly reliable.  960 people surveyed at the start of April across Poland.

The result: Libertas failed to get even a single person to “vote” for them in the poll.  Not one.  Not only did they register 0%, they failed to even get 0.1% of those polled to express a preference for them.

What to do?

So, what does Declan Ganley decide to do?  Well, according to English-language Polish news site TheNews.pl, he’s going to find a way around the funding rules.

Though European election law insists that campaign funds must come from within the relevant nations, Ganley will secure loans taken out in Poland, so finding a way around the rule, it was revealed late last month. Libertas Polska will then default on the loans, forcing banks to seek recompense from Ganley himself.

They’re not quoting some Euro-federalist opponent of Libertas in that story, they’re quoting Artur Zawisza, who they say is the Vice President of Libertas Poland, and who Wikipedia says is the President of the Polish-Irish Interparliamentary Group.

Is this how Declan Ganley financed Libertas in Ireland during the Lisbon Treaty referendum?  The Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) is still unsatisfied with the answers he gave about that funding.  Perhaps someone has unwittingly unearthed the loophole he’s stuffing millions of euro through.

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They’ve an even worse card security procedure, which they continue to use despite my repeated complaints.

AIB

Picture the scene, if you will.  Something fishy is going on on your credit card (normally it’s small value internet transactions).  The transactions are flagged up to the credit card fraud department, and they call you.

The Withheld Number

They call you from a withheld number.  You answer the phone, and the caller claims to be AIB Credit Card services, and asks you to prove to them that you’re actually the card holder!

At this stage on one call (and I get many from them – often over the same repeated transaction…another fail) I pointed out that as I was in posession of a “known good” phone number (i.e. the one that was attached to the credit card), and they were in posession of nothing more than a claim to be AIB, I was the one who should be asking the verification questions.  They didn’t like that.

Anyway, if you’re not as security aware as I am, you give them your credit card number, expiry date and full billing address (having already confirmed your name at the start of the conversation), and they then proceed to query some transactions.

How to scam an AIB customer

All the would be scammer needs to do to get an AIB customer’s credit card details is dial #31#<target’s phone number>.  The call will come up on the target’s phone as “Number Witheld” or “Anonymous” or similar.

90% of customers will then give the credit card number, expiry date, billing address and probably even the CVV2 number from the back of the card without question.

If the person refuses to give the details, the scammer can even refer them to the phone number on the back of the card, where AIB’s real credit card services will confirm that yes, that is how the calls come.  But no, there’ s no flags on their account at the moment – it must have all been cleared up.

What AIB should be doing

The correct way to handle this, in so far as there is one, is to call from a verifiable number (i.e. the one that appears on the back of the card), and ask people to call back to the number that appears on the back of the card (not “call 01 654….”, but “call us on the number on the back of your credit card”), or even better, a well known freephone telephone banking number (along the lines of the 1890 242424 number).

Bruce Schneier would have a heart attack if he heard this was coming from the two largest banks in the country.  Although, given what those two banks have been up to, it’s shouldn’t be too much of a surprise…

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