All hail our new robot Taoiseach.

robotPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition.

“Colossus: The Forbin Project”, is a great science fiction movie from the late 1960s which is a favourite of mine. It tells the story of a scientist, Charles Forbin, who builds a supercomputer for the president of the United States. The computer, Colossus, will control America’s nuclear arsenal under the thinking that if every country knows that the US can’t be psychologically bluffed anymore, they won’t dare attack it. Nobody thinks to test the damn thing before they turn it on, and when they do, Colossus announces that things would be much better if it ran everything, and it means everything. It then suggests that anyone who disagrees with it might like to discuss the matter with the business end of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Much hijinks ensue.

I’m reminded of the movie every time I read or hear a discussion about technology and robots replacing human jobs,  which is beginning to happen so often that I suspect it’s the robots writing the pieces.  But every time I see it, I always think an Irish Colossus would work quite well, if only because it would blow the whistle on so much of the spoofery of our elected leaders.

Take the latest observation from the Healy-Rae Party on the matter of the impairing effect or not of three pints of Guinness. To his credit, Danny Healy-Rae is not much different from many other backbenchers in both houses, shooting their mouths off looking for attention. The country looks over in their direction, rolls its eyes, hopes that the BBC or the late night US comedians don’t notice, and we all carry on about our business.

We’re missing a trick here.

See, if we had our very own automated Colossus-like RoboTaoiseach, it could approach the whole situation differently. First of all, it would recognise that Deputy Healy-Rae has been sent to the Dail by the people of Kerry, and those good people have a right to be heard.

Then it could maybe rapidly telephone poll the good deputy’s flock. Do they actually want to be able to get behind the wheel of their cars with a few jars on-board? If half of them back up their elected representative, RoboTaoiseach could then announce a pilot scheme, where drink driving thresholds in Kerry could be reduced for six months to see what happens. Finally, RoboTaoiseach could organise checkpoints along the Kerry border to ensure that the experiment doesn’t accidentally spill, pardon the pun, into the rest of the country.

We then sit back and watch. Maybe it works fine. Maybe he’s right, and the issue of late night rural transport is resolved with only minor issues. Or maybe late night Kerry turns in “Mad Max in Killarney” and we’re stacking up the bodies, all victims of The Healy-Rae Law, which of course RoboTaoiseach will naturally call it. Credit where it’s due.

Either way, we learn a valuable lesson.  Firstly, that the people of a county and the person they send to Dublin will be listened to.

Secondly, imagine the wave of sheer terror that would sweep across our politicos if they thought that RoboTaoiseach would actually attempt to at least test drive every attention seeking utterance they made. Even worse, making sure the voters knew that the latest wheeze was the initiative of senator X or deputy Y.

Ah, but they’re a wily bunch, you say. They’ll just keep calling for more spending on things.

A demand for more money for Bus Eireann workers from Deputy X? Sure. No problem.

When RoboTaoiseach deducts an extra €1.50 a week from every PAYE workers’ payslip, and deducts €1.50 from every pensioner’s weekly payment, and proudly declares it the Deputy X Bus Eireann Tax to build up the fund to deliver on his demand, we might see a change of heart.

Scrap the water charges? Easy-peasy: here’s the Deputy Murphy General Taxation Water Levy as ordered.

Across the land politicians would start sweating every time a microphone was put under their nose for fear that RoboTaoiseach might hear them and try to implement whatever they spew out, consequences and all.

All that guff about reforming the Seanad and neutrality and a right to housing? Watch the looks of sheer horror on their faces as RoboTaoiseach starts reading through Fianna Fail and Fine Gael manifestos and actually implementing what’s in them.

Watch RoboTaoiseach, listening to a rural politician complain about poor mobile phone service in his parish start assembling a mast to resolve the issue, and then take the deputy to task l on the floor of the house when the same deputy objects to masts being built in the parish.

There’d be political trousers destroyed everywhere.

Eventually though you could see Irish politicians come to love RoboTaoiseach the same way they love the county manager system. They’d almost certainly end up being delighted at being able to go home to the parish and nod sagely at their disappointed constituents.

“Sure look it,” they’d say, eyes darting around to make sure there was no RoboTaoiseach drone hovering overhead listening out for rogue political promises.

“Of course I want to get the county billions without paying any taxes. This parish deserves nothing less,” he’d whisper.

“But that bloody robot up in Dublin…”

Just in case you’re wondering, this column was not written by a robot…was not written by a robot…was not written…

The left are now the status quo conservatives.

Harold Wilson TimePreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition

In 1963 Harold Wilson, then leader of the British Labour Party, made a famous speech where he contrasted the then governing Tories with Labour. He painted the government as a party of the past, and described a future Labour government shaping Britain in the “white heat” of a scientific and technological revolution. Wilson would later write about replacing the cloth cap with the laboratory coat as the uniform of the British working class.

As with many things about Harold Wilson, the hyperbole struggled to match the reality of him in government. But what was interesting was the fact that Labour, as in 1945, was the party of new ideas. The left stood for change, the right the party of the rotten status quo. Across Europe, with the SPD in Germany in the 1960s, or Mitterand’s election to the French presidency in 1981, the left were the parties of progress.

What’s striking today is how, from Ireland through the UK to France and elsewhere, the left are now the party of resistance to logical change.

Consider the attitude across Europe of left parties to raising the retirement age. Almost universally there is opposition, early retirement now seen as a totem that must be protected. This despite the fact that the current retirement band, from 50 to 65, takes no account of the increase in life expectancy. It’s not impossible now for someone who takes early retirement at 50 to live beyond 100 and therefore have spent most of their life retired.

That’s not to say there aren’t good reasons for early retirement. Brickies, firefighters and miners all lead working lives which could leave them physically in rag order in a way many office workers will never be. There have to be exceptions. But what’s striking is the refusal of many on the left to confront the reality. That being 65 now is not the same as being 65 in our grandfathers’ time.

Many of the parties of the left, who actively demand more public spending, then refuse to support pension reform which is needed to generate the very revenue required to fund the spending they call for.

It’s almost impossible to find a party of the left in Europe that has any new ideas about how to manage change. Instead, opposition to free trade, Uber and flexible employment laws is in danger of becoming the standard response, not because they think this will make things better but because they literally have no other ideas.

The left has now become the party of the blacksmith, the gas-lamp lighter, the town crier and the  guy who walks in front of cars with a red flag.

What’s most depressing is that now more than ever we need a strong left. Technological change is about to bring a huge challenge to the amount of adequately paid work available compared to the pool of jobseekers. Maybe public works programmes, or a universal basic income will be necessary. But from where I’m sitting, it looks like the left, paralysed by a dirth of new ideas and a Corbynist paranoia of betrayal towards those who do confront the old sacred cows isn’t up to it.

The refusal of the left to consider the inconsiderable could end up strangling the left through simple atrophy. In the UK and France the traditional left is running on the usual “free stuff” platforms and still losing elections. Because they’re just not credible.

Take the minimum wage. It’s not inconceivable that if a country were to introduce a universal basic income, it could make sense to then abolish the minimum wage to allow for the creation of the flexible “gig economy” type jobs that would top up UBI. But can anyone imagine the current left even countenancing that on principle? Even if the evidence emerged that it created more opportunities in a rapidly-automating economy with a labour surplus? To even consider it would lead to denunciations of being a political Judas.     

The problem with the European left is that it has gone from being a dynamic flexible force for change into a rigid defender of status quos and fetishes. It does not see the modern world and globalisation as a force to be harnessed and managed but something to be feared and hidden from, behind borders and tariff barriers. Even though these are very old ideas that barely worked in their day and simply don’t apply in an age where many products have no actual physical form.

There has got to be something learned from the fact that the left have actually gone backwards during the greatest crisis of capitalism in living history.

Having said that, there is a model for the modern left. Consider that the welfare state in both Ireland and Canada was not built as much by the left as the pragmatic centre and centre-right. Despite hysterical finger-pointing by the left, Theresa May, who is not seen as an extremist outside of Corbynista Labour, has that potential too. To make the Tories the British Fianna Fail, a party that trims and bends between aspiration on one side and support for social welfare on the other.

Outrageous to suggest that? Perhaps.

But remember: it’s the voters who decide where the mainstream is. 

A midlife crisis.

HarleyPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition.

There’s a small retail development in Ballymount, in south west Dublin that always strikes me as “Mid-Life Crisis Central”. At one end is a store that sells expensive electric guitars. At the other end there’s a Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership. Every time I pass it, I have visions of mid-fifties south Dublin solicitors pulling out onto the road, their shiny new ax on their backs, their new hogs roaring under them, their bellies straining at the Harley jacket, squeaking in its leathery newness.

You know what? Why not? Why wouldn’t you? From a distance, it looks like a desperate attempt to reverse the aging process, and it often is, but not always. Sometimes a man always wanted a Porsche and has reached a point in life when he can afford it and thinks “why not?” Leave the money for his spoiled kids to squander?

He’s not the fellow to worry about. It’s the other guy, who is trying to reverse the clock. The motorbike is just a thing. It’s when lust rears its ugly head that you have a problem.

Straight men go through a cycle in life. As a teenager, it’s very simple. Your hormones dictate that you what to touch, kiss, seduce the most beautiful women you can. Personality doesn’t really matter. It’s all flesh viewed through a haze of hormones.

As you get older, you wise up. You realise that sex, great and all as it is, doesn’t work on its own. You actually have to like the person too. That’s a big moment of realisation, and many men never reach it. It matters: a marriage can just as easily be destroyed by a partner’s blood slowly simmering as they watch their other half fluting around in Ikea. Irritation is as damaging to a marriage as adultery, if not more. Making someone laugh is the gold standard.

The problem is that the male mid-life crisis, in its lustiest form, can throw all that on its head. It’s a big deal when a man realises that not only are young women now out of his league, but that they can’t even see him. They see someone’s dad, some aul fella, or worse still, some dirty aul fella leering at them. You cannot underestimate the impact that has on that gossamer fragile thing that is the Irish male ego.

The sensible thing to do is to accept it as nature’s unending Ferris wheel and remember that you had your fun when it was your turn. Or, failing that, at least stick to women your own age. Irish women in the forties and beyond are actually one of the nation’s great untapped resources, primarily because they’re a match for Irish men. They have their measure, and in a country where men were raised under the rule of the mammy, that matters.

For some men, surrender is not an option. You see them in Dundrum, dressed three decades too young, often with a surreal belief in the youth-enhancing power of suede.

Then you see her. Not quite young enough to be his daughter, but certainly his daughter’s best friend’s older sister. Occasionally, what we used to call in Old Dublinese, “bet into her jeans”. The hair long and often blonde, the cheekbones chiselled.

Of course, even with the help of that revolutionary blue pill, the mist of lust eventually clears for most men, and he discovers he’s in a nightclub at 2am, his ears throbbing with what is allegedly music wondering if he having a stroke?

His brain starts to reboot, and reminds him of reality.

That he actually likes being in bed by ten with Antony Beevor’s “Stalingrad” and a mug of tea and two chocolate digestives.

That he stops seeing her wandering around the apartment in her high heels and underwear as a source of arousal but instead feels tired, and terrified when she talks about babies.

That his kids, older by a year than his girlfriend, roll their eyes every time they see him wearing something she bought him.

Then his mates start talking about the prostate exams and statins and are able to reel off consultant names as if they’re talking about racehorses or Premiership footballers. “You want to see Haggerty in the Mater Private about that. He’s the best waterworks man in the country.”

The girlfriend doesn’t know who Peter Sellers or Robert Mitchum was, and he doesn’t know what a Ryan Gosling is. He finally accepts that he’s not a young man anymore when, as people recommend boxsets to him, the length of them is a deciding factor. He’s not sure how much of rest of the rest of his life he’s willing to give over to “The Wire” or “The Good Wife”.

What seals the deal is news of an acquaintance, one younger than him, dropping dead from the proverbial Irish “massive heart attack”. Sitting in the church with the girlfriend, her dolled up like she’s the baddy’s girlfriend in a James Bond, her Melania scowl permanently in place, he looks around. He sees his wife, his friends, the sea of silver, grey and shiny domes. These, he realises, are his people. They get his references, his stories, and don’t know what a Ryan Gosling is either.

If he has any sense, he’ll go home. Although he might still keep the Harley for weekends.

20 Years Later: Ireland 2037.

News Future logoPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition.

For the citizens of the Federal Union of Ireland, looking back from their vantage point of the year 2037, 2017 would turn out to be one of those years when a nation’s destiny pivots, even if it isn’t realized at the time.

The road to Irish unification began that year, as unionism went from being the dominant ideology of Northern Ireland to merely one option on the table. The triggering of Britain’s exit from the European Union, and the realisation that the interests of Northern Ireland barely registered if at all in high places in England was another key moment.

But it wasn’t just unionists who were forced to confront new realities. If unionists were left open mouthed at England’s lack of interest in them, nationalists were forced to confront the intellectual emptiness of Irish unification, and the fact that almost no thought had been given to what a united Ireland would look like. The old pub closing time declarations of running a tricolour up over Stormont and job done were rapidly revealed to be absolutely worthless. Indeed, once nationalists in both the north and the south grasped that unity meant Irishness suddenly meaning one in five Irish being monarchists with totally different view of the old enemy, it triggered as big a crisis in nationalist political circles in both Dublin and Belfast.

The hard reality of Brexit, and the refusal of English voters to regard subsidising Northern Ireland as being their problem led to unionists looking south at a country that, unlike their English cousins, actually was interested in them.

The negotiations were started by proxies of proxies, people who had no public association with either side, but had access to major players in Dublin and Belfast. The draft papers that emerged on the desks of the taoiseach and the first minister by circuitous route, caused a bigger panic in Dublin than Belfast, in that they weren’t a German style reintegration of the country but a South African style blueprint for a new one, with a new name, flag, anthem, constitution, official language, and a constitutional guarantee as to what proportion of the national budget would be given to the northern assembly.

It was during the negotiations that Dublin realised the fundamental weakness in its argument. That it really wanted a united Ireland, whereas Belfast could only deliver unionism to an all bells and whistles deal, and both sides knew it. As Trumpism had proven, even economic hardship can be overwhelmed by a fear of “them”.

The talks collapsed a number of times, but history now shows that this had been a deliberate tactic of the new young  Taoiseach who recognised that the longer it took, the more time the Irish people would have to get used to the idea that what was on offer was a new and different country.

Even after the new agreement was passed on both sides of the border the new country faced challenges. Within ten years, the rapidly escalating automation of the global economy delivered to Ireland the challenge of shrinking labour demand just as the country crashed through the six million population barrier.

As it happened, Ireland turned out to be the perfect size for the dynamic innovation needed for a country to compete in the age of the robot. The social welfare system was replaced with a basic income, and Europe, having defeated the far right challenge that had overwhelmed both the US and the UK, recognised that tax harmonisation and access to its single market were the two weapons vital to funding that new system.

The Ireland of 2037, presided over by President The Lord Paisley, remains one of the richest most free nations in the world, its population swelling with liberal refugees from the US and England. There are tensions with England, as EU countries refuse to extradite suspects who may be executed, and England is one of the more casual nations with the noose these days, as Tony Blair nearly discovered before Irish diplomats smuggled him out of the UK and to asylum in Ireland.

In the Phoenix Park the finishing touches are being put on the memorial to the 237 Irish volunteers who served and died in the joint Scottish-Irish regiment of the European Defence Force liberating Poland and the Baltics from the Russians. Scotland’s entry into the EU coincided with the signing of the Edinburgh treaty between Scotland and Ireland, much to the delight of the Ulster Party in the Dail/National Assembly, both countries agreeing to fund a joint air and sea force to patrol their waters and airspace. The first shared ship, the William Wallace, is based in Cork. The Tom Crean will be based in Aberdeen.

Robots are everywhere, from the permanent police drones that replaced small police stations, solar powered and hovering silently, their infrared cameras seeing all, to the automated vehicles that make up 90% of the vehicles on the road.

What few predicted was the new creative age the robots would unleash. Ireland is now awash with poets, artists, musicians, performers, writers, people who thought they had been left on the economic scrapheap but instead found themselves liberated. Ireland’s most recent Oscar winner, for best supporting actor, had been a Dublin Bus driver five years previously.

Memo to the new Taoiseach.

Previously published in The Times Ireland Edition

Some years ago, I had to collect a relative from Dublin airport. The flight had been delayed, and it was quite late, and as I stood in arrivals I noticed a former Taoiseach standing in the small waiting crowd. Watching him for a while, it was striking that he got none of the double-taking that even well-known politicians get. He’d been the most powerful man in the country, and now was hardly noticed. 

He hadn’t been a bad Taoiseach. It felt like he’d just, for the most part, physically been there. Like Enda.

Whilst it’s fair to say that Enda Kenny had achievements as Taoiseach, overall, as he prepares to leave office, you can’t help feeling that the phrase “squandered opportunities” will be the one that hangs most around the Kenny era. Here was a man whose government came to power with the greatest majority ever, and with a momentum in the country willing to toss aside the old ways of doing politics. He leaves office with the political system, in terms of where actual decision making power lies, in almost the exact shape that he found it.

His successor, whomever it is, needs to ponder that. The refusal to radically change the system didn’t help Enda in the long run. He’s not leaving office of his own volition, but just one step ahead of a political posse.

The next Taoiseach has to decide whether that is what he wants to be too? Another placeholder holding on by his fingernails until he too gets turfed out? Or a man with a body of work that will be his legacy. If he’s the latter, he needs to get cracking from day one.

I have, much to your surprise, dear reader, I’m sure, a few suggestions for our new Taoiseach.

First, decide in your head that less is more. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, advised that rather than overpromise, politicians should under-promise and over-deliver, and not make a big hullabaloo about a policy until it is actually up and running. Don’t make vague and unmeasurable promises about “tackling” the housing crisis and A&E. Decide what you can actually do, do it, then declare it.

There are a number of things you can do quite easily. One, for example, involves a simple clear statement as Taoiseach stating that anyone who paid their water charges will get their money back. These are your heartland, and it’s time they got some respect for obeying the law you passed.

Secondly, explain in a straightforward way, face to camera, why the national children’s hospital has to be built in a congested urban area and not on the M50: there may be very good reasons, but no one in government seems capable of communicating them so far.

Reconsider the whole free GP visits for all proposal. It looks great on paper, but all it will really do is create waiting lists to see GPs. Like it or not, charging for GPs forces patients to perform their own triage. However, do recognise that the squeezed middle without medical cards are paying for everything: give them vouchers for a few free GP visits a year. It eases the burden without flooding GP surgeries.

Next, recognise that voter education, or rather, the lack of it, is the issue that is poisoning politics across the west and could easily do so here. Just look at the number of people on Obamacare who voted to abolish Obamacare and are now shocked to be losing their Obamacare. Government, the matching of finite taxes to infinite public service demand, is going to more and more require the public understanding why choices are being made. As it happens, the last Dail has done a lot of work on this. There is a proposed electoral commission, and minister Eoghan Murphy’s Tax Transparency bill is sitting in the bowels of the Oireachtas somewhere. Let these both be fast-tracked through as the beginning of an active campaign to educate voters as to why decisions are made.

Then move onto making the opposition work for their salaries. For years we’ve been promised an Oireachtas Budget Office that would take opposition proposals through the ringers and make sure the sums were right. Not only should you set it up, you should task it to automatically cost every opposition spending proposal. The opposition work for the taxpayers too: we’re entitled to value off them as well.

While you’re at it, push through elected mayors and that Seanad reform bill. A Seanad elected on a non-geographical basis will focus on national policy, as government has to. And elected mayors are the antidote to reckless opposition: let a load of Alphabet Left and Sinn Fein mayors have to legally choose between increased property taxes and local public services. Make them make decisions.

Finally, invite every EU member state with a population of less than 6m, all twelve of them, to a Summit of the Small. We’re forever complaining when Germany, France and the big six have their summits. Let’s have ours, and send out a clear message that we will defend the free-movement free-trade single market Europe and the sovereignty of small nations.

From day one as Taoiseach, you have a choice. You can just physically be Taoiseach, or you can set out to change the direction of society.

No prizes for guessing which one gets remembered.

Do we need a second national police force?

GardaPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition

Here’s a quiz to get your brain cogs whirring this morning. Aside from being (or having been) semi-state bodies, what do Aer Lingus, Eircom, Dublin Bus, RTE and the National Car Test all have in common? The answer is that all improved their services after encountering direct competition and the idea that their performance might actually affect their existence.

This occurred to me whilst watching last week’s formal opening of the Annual Shall We Sack The Garda Commissioner festival. We’re all familiar with the format. Something involving the guards explodes into the public consciousness, and we do the traditional Irish thing of either blaming The System as if we have no control over it, or we point to the current incumbent and make them Baddie of the Week.

It’ll rumble on a bit, and then we might get the old “personal health/family reasons” letter, she heads off with her pension, the next one steps up, and we all agree to meet around this cauldron same time next year to kick it off again. We should probably make Garda scandal day a bank holiday. At least that way we’d all get a weekend out of it.

At its heart is an issue about the Garda Siochana. Now, before I kick off, let me say that for various professional and personal reasons I’ve had a not unreasonable amount of dealings with the Gardai. I’ve got to be honest: I found them professional, courteous and diligent. But one thing that struck me in all my dealings with them is that really good Gardai, and there are really good Gardai, are good despite their organisation, not because of it.

I’ve had encounters with young guards who are incredibly frustrated by the fact that their own technology, their personal phones and laptops, are vastly superior to the equipment they are supposed to use.  I’ve seen them handwriting reams of statements which then have to be typed up. I’ve participated in a line-up where the victim was expected to enter the room, walk up to the alleged person who’d beat seven bells out of them earlier that day, and place his hand on the suspects’ shoulder.

I wasn’t the suspect, just in case you’re wondering.

We have a force that is physically courageous and clean by international standards. When I say that, people snort, but it’s true. We don’t have a culture of street cops shaking us down for cash, which is common enough in some countries: I know of one person who was robbed on the street by police offers in St Petersburg. But it is also a force that is not fit for 21st century purpose, and we have to ask ourselves why.

In the old Tom & Jerry cartoons of the 1940s, and in the old “Batman” TV show in the 1960s, it was taken as read that large numbers of police in Boston, Chicago and New York were actual Irish immigrants or of Irish descent. Why was that? Was it because as a people we were drawn to law and order? If you knew us as a people, you’d think that highly unlikely. No, the Irish joined the police because it was a good pensionable job. It offered security, and that is a culture which permeates most Irish public bodies. The terms and conditions of the body’s employees are often, unofficially, the primary concern of the organisation.

As I mentioned earlier, this culture has been forced to change when public bodies actually start to lose business to competition, and questions about their actual necessity start to get asked. That forced Dublin Bus to start providing a dedicated service to Dublin airport, or Eircom and Aer Lingus to lower their prices.

Almost uniquely, the Garda Siochana have, by the nature of its mission, being exempt from those same pressures, and it shows. It’s not that the force hasn’t changed or improved, but not at the same noticeable pace as the rest of the semi-state sector. Look at the forces record on dealing with white collar crime and especially political corruption. Or try and report a case of internet fraud to a Garda station (which Paypal require you to do in such cases) and watch the blank face on an older Garda. Again, I have a relative who was lectured by a desk sergeant about staying away from “that internet thing”. Is that official Garda policy in a country with notions about being the digital hub of Europe?

The Garda need competition, and here’s how we do it. We outsource those areas where the Gardai are failing, like political corruption, white collar and internet crime. Let’s put it out to tender, for a fixed contract period, and see if we can get some large US or UK private security or law firm interested. The successful applicant will have the same Garda powers and legal restraints in those areas, and be paid a bonus on conviction in an Irish court. They’ll be answerable to GSOC.

What do we have to lose? The Gardai are not doing much in those areas anyway, so any increase in activity is to the good, and might force the Gardai to modernise out of sheer fear of that greatest of all Irish motivators, the fear of being shown up.

And here’s the beauty: if it doesn’t work, we can sack all of them.

 

Memo to the new Taoiseach.

An-Taoiseach-Enda-Kenny3Previously published in The Times Ireland Edition.

Some years ago, I had to collect a relative from Dublin airport. The flight had been delayed, and it was quite late, and as I stood in arrivals I noticed a former Taoiseach standing in the small waiting crowd. Watching him for a while, it was striking that he got none of the double-taking that even well-known politicians get. He’d been the most powerful man in the country, and now was hardly noticed. 

He hadn’t been a bad Taoiseach. It felt like he’d just, for the most part, physically been there. Like Enda.

Whilst it’s fair to say that Enda Kenny had achievements as Taoiseach, overall, as he prepares to leave office, you can’t help feeling that the phrase “squandered opportunities” will be the one that hangs most around the Kenny era. Here was a man whose government came to power with the greatest majority ever, and with a momentum in the country willing to toss aside the old ways of doing politics. He leaves office with the political system, in terms of where actual decision making power lies, in almost the exact shape that he found it.

His successor, whomever it is, needs to ponder that. The refusal to radically change the system didn’t help Enda in the long run. He’s not leaving office of his own volition, but just one step ahead of a political posse.

The next Taoiseach has to decide whether that is what he wants to be too? Another placeholder holding on by his fingernails until he too gets turfed out? Or a man with a body of work that will be his legacy. If he’s the latter, he needs to get cracking from day one.

I have, much to your surprise, dear reader, I’m sure, a few suggestions for our new Taoiseach.

First, decide in your head that less is more. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, advised that rather than overpromise, politicians should under-promise and over-deliver, and not make a big hullabaloo about a policy until it is actually up and running. Don’t make vague and unmeasurable promises about “tackling” the housing crisis and A&E. Decide what you can actually do, do it, then declare it.

There are a number of things you can do quite easily. One, for example, involves a simple clear statement as Taoiseach stating that anyone who paid their water charges will get their money back. These are your heartland, and it’s time they got some respect for obeying the law you passed.

Secondly, explain in a straightforward way, face to camera, why the national children’s hospital has to be built in a congested urban area and not on the M50: there may be very good reasons, but no one in government seems capable of communicating them so far.

Reconsider the whole free GP visits for all proposal. It looks great on paper, but all it will really do is create waiting lists to see GPs. Like it or not, charging for GPs forces patients to perform their own triage. However, do recognise that the squeezed middle without medical cards are paying for everything: give them vouchers for a few free GP visits a year. It eases the burden without flooding GP surgeries.

Next, recognise that voter education, or rather, the lack of it, is the issue that is poisoning politics across the west and could easily do so here. Just look at the number of people on Obamacare who voted to abolish Obamacare and are now shocked to be losing their Obamacare. Government, the matching of finite taxes to infinite public service demand, is going to more and more require the public understanding why choices are being made. As it happens, the last Dail has done a lot of work on this. There is a proposed electoral commission, and minister Eoghan Murphy’s Tax Transparency bill is sitting in the bowels of the Oireachtas somewhere. Let these both be fast-tracked through as the beginning of an active campaign to educate voters as to why decisions are made.

Then move onto making the opposition work for their salaries. For years we’ve been promised an Oireachtas Budget Office that would take opposition proposals through the ringers and make sure the sums were right. Not only should you set it up, you should task it to automatically cost every opposition spending proposal. The opposition work for the taxpayers too: we’re entitled to value off them as well.

While you’re at it, push through elected mayors and that Seanad reform bill. A Seanad elected on a non-geographical basis will focus on national policy, as government has to. And elected mayors are the antidote to reckless opposition: let a load of Alphabet Left and Sinn Fein mayors have to legally choose between increased property taxes and local public services. Make them make decisions.

Finally, invite every EU member state with a population of less than 6m, all twelve of them, to a Summit of the Small. We’re forever complaining when Germany, France and the big six have their summits. Let’s have ours, and send out a clear message that we will defend the free-movement free-trade single market Europe and the sovereignty of small nations.

From day one as Taoiseach, you have a choice. You can just physically be Taoiseach, or you can set out to change the direction of society.

No prizes for guessing which one gets remembered.

Yes, but WHY do you want to be Taoiseach?

CPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition.

When I was a kid in the 1980s, becoming aware of politics, Sunday morning seemed to me to be an important time. Just before the Sunday dinner the opening credits of “Weekend World” would erupt from the television. The show about British politics, presented by former Labour MP Brian Walden, was nearly always too heavy for me to watch, but I always came away with two impressions.

The first was that its theme music, the prog rock group Mountain’s “Nantucket Sleighride” seemed to me as a kid a bit too mischievous for a political programme theme, in that, played over scenes off that week’s political events, it made politics look very exciting indeed.

The second was that this was a serious programme for serious people. The politicians who went on it, the Denis Healeys, the Nigel Lawsons, the Roy Jenkins, seemed to be very big beasts. They had to be, because Walden conducted what we now call a “forensic interview”. A minister or opposition spokesperson had to know their brief, not because the show got a large audience but because the guests knew that their colleagues and the press gallery would all be watching, and making a bags on “Weekend World” had an impact on your reputation as a serious player.

I was reminded of the show recently watching Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar teeing up to replace Enda Kenny as Taoiseach. How would all three men handle a serious-big-picture-with- details interview on their vision for Taoiseach? One challenge for all three is the tendency of Irish politicians to see an interview not as an opportunity to test an idea or communicate an objective, but as a chore to be endured. Usually with the presentation of a bingo card of safe inoffensive guff phrases like “world class health service” and “meeting the challenges” and listing out everything as a priority. Requests for detail will be met with declarations of support for “Comprehensive reviews”. In short, they try to ride out the clock and get the hell out of there without giving away too much.

We know for certain that the current Taoiseach does struggle with detailed interviews. Not because his government doesn’t have achievements, because it does. Indeed, he has been the victim of the simple churlishness of Irish voters who are willing to blame a government for every economic setback, but rarely give them any credit for creating an environment for economic progress. But then, get a vague Taoiseach, get vague voters.  

If there is one lesson Coveney and Varadkar should heed, it’s the importance of being able to communicate a clear metric of what success looks like. The Fine Gael/Labour coalition actually did the opposite, running on a platform of opposition to many of the measures such as water charges and property taxes that they would actually be forced to implement. More importantly, they knew well before polling day that they’d have no choice given the state of the public finances.

But by 2016, the metric to measure them was what they said in 2011 and what they had lied about. What seemed like clever in 2011 to Labour nearly destroyed them as a party in 2016, with the spectacle of Labour activists cringing at the media actually using their own 2011 appearances against them.

It’s not good enough to spew guff about “tackling” the A&E or housing crisis. It’s about either man being able to stand alone in a room with a blank flip chart and a felt tip pen and write out the three or four specific objectives they will have pledged to deliver by the end of this Dail in 2021.

How long should a person reasonably have to wait in A&E before an actual doctor is treating them?

What is the reasonable percentage of gross income someone in Dublin should expect to pay in rent for a two bedroom flat?

There’s a whole raft of questions like those above, but here’s the thing. If either man looks at either of those questions and says “How the hell am I supposed to know?”, then I’d suggest they ring the other guy and tell him they’re withdrawing.  They’re two simple questions about ordinary life, and if a prospective Taoiseach can’t either see that, or doesn’t want to answer them, or simply don’t think about things like that, they’re not the man for the job.

We have had, in Enda Kenny, and I’d suggest Brian Cowen too, Taoisigh who came into the job because it was the next rung on the ladder. Is there anyone who really believes either man came back from the park having met the president and rubbed their hands thinking “Finally! A chance to do something on policy X!” Noel Browne came into office determined to do bloody war upon tuberculosis. Labour in 1992 came in and immediately launched a swathe of liberal reforms, leaving a legacy in 1997 of the single most socially liberalising government in the history of the state. Dev from 1932, cumulating in a new constitution in 1937, had a plan.  

In 1979 Ted Kennedy famously damaged his campaign for president by being unable to answer why he wanted to be president.

Simon and Leo have a question to answer: why do you want power?    

Ireland as a liberal oasis.

islandPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition. 

As a columnist, giving out yards about the state of the country is pretty much bread and butter. But I’ve always tried, if not succeeded, to convey that my frustration with this country is not from anger with it, but the fact that it is so tantalisingly close to moving from being a great country to a world leader.

It’s from that perspective that I get irritated when I see, and it’s pretty common in Ireland, someone launch a tirade about what an awful place this country is. You’ve heard it yourself. They’ll start with homelessness, or health waiting lists, or mental health services, or any number of legitimate areas of dissatisfaction. But that will be a launch pad into how we have no health service, no welfare system, no housing, how the country is run by the banks and how austerity has left us in a third world country. How we have no democratic choices and how the Gardai are fascist boot-boys and how the media is run by Ireland’s version of C. Montgomery Burns.

Except they get to say all this freely. And secret police don’t kick in their doors, or shut down the Socialist Worker. And they do win seats in the national parliament and draw very nice salaries.

See, that’s the frustrating bit. This country has its flaws in its public services yet our health service provides cheap and efficient care for millions. The great majority of our people are housed pretty well. Hunger is less of a problem than obesity. Our old people get good pensions.

Say what you will about Enda and Micheal and the rest, because you can. Unlike in Turkey or Russia. In Russia journalists investigating crime and corruption get murdered. Know what happens when a crime journalist gets murdered here? As it happens, we do know. The state, our state, mobilised to defend freedom of speech and brought its boot down not on the free press but those who threatened violence against it. Give abuse to our politicians and they might abuse you back, but they won’t send thugs around, even the ones who used to justify murdering political opponents.

But if you really want to know what a great country this is, ask someone who lives and works here but isn’t an EU citizen. Ask them would they like an Irish passport, and they’ll tell you it is a treasured document.

This isn’t all an accident. We’ve made mistakes, and lacked ambition for ourselves, especially with our natural resources, but this has been, since the end of the civil war, one of the most free nations on Earth. As the Trumps and Wilders and Le Pens and Erdogans and Putins become the norm, our little island may well be one of the few tiny specks of light in the coming darkness.

There’s a potential for us, to be Singapore on the Atlantic, but with, you know, a proper democracy. A small well-run place where crazy people are kept away from power. Where Enda and the rest, for all they do that gets up our nose, aren’t Trumpolini. Ourselves, Canada and New Zealand have the chance to be a haven for Americans and others. For a fee, of course. We can’t let everybody in.

But we have a clean, stable, English speaking country with socialised medicine, strict gun control, no death penalty, same-sex marriage, public broadcasting standards, a restriction on paid political advertising on TV and fair elections. We’ve even got an American in the cabinet, and they’ll just love Michael D with the poetry and the Castro. Yeah, the abortion thing might annoy them but given what the Republicans are planning to do with abortion it’s not impossible we end up becoming a pro-choice country just as the US buys a second-hand 8th amendment.

As President Trump starts pulling back on foreign direct investment by US companies, we might find ourselves scrambling for some other strategy.

I think I might have it. You know that ad the National Lottery are currently running about the guy who wins the lottery and buys an island which he gives to Ireland? The first time I saw it, I thought it was just silly and not a little bit colonialist. But then it struck me. If Ireland remains one of the few countries in the world not run by a variation of either Nazis or good old fashioned eejits (I’m looking at you, Venezuela), we could be a refuge for moderate rich liberals who want either to ride out the storm o’crazy or even retire. But the weather isn’t great here, and it’s a serious problem for all those Californian liberals.

But what if the state did buy an island somewhere nice? Owned by the state, operated by the state, and served by Aer Lingus. We could extend our non-crazy jurisdiction to the island, and still tax those liberal refugees. We could stick a few guards and soldiers on it, use rotation to the island for six months as a sweetener in the public sector talks, and here’s the best bit.

It would become a  holiday destination for the Irish. Good weather but also somewhere you could still see “Fair City”, get proper chips and Brennans sliced pan. We’d keep the holiday spending in the extended country’s economy.

Of course, we’d have to do something about the duty free and the price of a pint. As for who we’d appoint governor…

When making choices becomes unpopular.

oil-rigPreviously published in The Times Ireland Edition

Every once in a while a myth emerges that Ireland could be the Saudi Arabia of either natural gas or fish if it hadn’t been for the dastardly EU or multinationals robbing our natural resources. It’s a very comfortable myth that fits meets with all the criteria of a good Irish tale of suffering and woe.

Firstly, it’s about the simple decent Irish being tricked out of something by more clever foreigners, once again left standing on the side of the market road with a bag of beans as some rapscallion legs it with our prize heifer. Secondly, the prize is always something magical that could have solved all our problems if only we had a chance to benefit from it. Thirdly, it fits in with our bizarre national pride in being the fabled Most Oppressed People Ever, a country with an almost masochistic pleasure in being done in once again. As if our national symbol shouldn’t be a harp but a “Pulp Fiction” style leather gimp mask.

It’s a load of nonsense. It’s true, we do let other countries take out vast amount of fish from our waters. But the question I always ask is what were we doing with those fish before we joined the EEC in 1973? Bear in mind the Norwegian people turned down EEC membership in the same year  because they had exploited their resources and felt they didn’t need to join. Were we a fishing superpower, exploiting our natural resources before the evil continentals came and stole our golden goose?

No, we weren’t. In our 50 years of independence from 1922 until we joined the EEC in 1973 we did feck all with our much ballyhooed natural resources. We had no Brits to bully us, no European Commission to set down fishing quotas. We had just us and near total national sovereignty. We were masters of our own domain.

Did we build our own super trawlers and factory ships and conquer foreign markets with good Irish fish? Did we create hundreds of thousands of Irish jobs as a result, stemming the flow of emigration that blighted our land for a century and more?

No. We did little, but started complaining once someone else did something with them, even though we benefitted both directly and indirectly, as did they.

And, by the way: you know all that complaining we do about Spanish trawlers? We were in the EEC before Spain was. We were on the team negotiating with Spain on them joining, so we can hardly complain that Spain got too good a deal.

With Spain in 1985, as with us joining in 1972, we did a cost benefit analysis. What was in our overall interest? Would we lose fish to others? Yes. Would we gain in other areas by joining the EEC and not blocking Spain, as we could have? Yes. We took a conscious decision that hurting our fishermen, and we did hurt them, was in the long run of benefit to the common good for the majority, and we were right. This country, and the people in it, are far richer than in was in 1972 when we had complete control over our fisheries. We had far more farmers than fishermen and they benefitted from access to European markets, standards and the Common Agricultural Policy.

The fact that we chose not to share more of that new wealth with those fishing communities was not a decision made in Brussels, but in the Dail. National sovereignty in action.

In recent years, it’s becoming fashionable to talk once again about national sovereignty as if it is some newly discovered concept. As if suddenly just ignoring the EU or globalisation is some sort of Make Ireland Great Again switch that we could just press if the people we keep electing in free elections weren’t all traitors and sell-outs.    

Yet national sovereignty itself is a compromise between symbolism and the power to shape a nation’s destiny. North Korea has much more national sovereignty than South Korea, for example. The south is tied into defence and trade alliances with the US and Japan, whereas North Korea barely listens to China, if anyone. Yet in the south they ponder buying the new Samsung or an iPhone, whereas in the north the big debate for many is whether there’s enough tree bark to go around for supper. Which people have more real sovereignty, that is, control over their actual lives?

The debate to be had isn’t about national sovereignty, but a dangerous growing tendency in electorates across the west to not liking choices. It’s hardly suprising: the post-1945 welfare state was fuelled by levels of growth and borrowing that made choices easy. But there are no easy choices left.

Look at the hand-wringing on-line over the horrific scenes coming out of Aleppo, and Europeans demanding their governments do something. In the same breath, many of the same people oppose Europe acquiring a serious military capability, or the consequences of taking in refugees, or creating some vast EU funded safe-zone somewhere.

But this is the challenge for the new generation of those seeking office. To confront the people who elected them and tell them that phrases like national sovereignty are meaningless. That modern life is about choices, often choosing the least worst of them.

The politician who figures out how to communicate that and still get elected will rule the world.