Richard O'Donoghue: Government on a Railway Track of Failure
Richard O'Donoghue used his Private Members' Bill speech to challenge the government's response to repeated economic shocks and to demand accountability for costly policy failures. He called for a proactive rainy day fund, capping mechanisms for price shocks, and investigations into bad advice that cost the state.
Main argument
Richard O'Donoghue outlines how successive external shocks - from COVID to the war in Ukraine and the current international tensions - expose a pattern of reactive government policy. He argues that repeating the same approaches without reform is "a form of madness" and leaves farmers, small businesses, construction firms and workers bearing the cost.
Accountability and public projects
O'Donoghue confronted the Minister and departmental officials at a Budget Oversight committee session to ask who is held accountable for massive overruns, naming the Children's Hospital as an example that went a billion over budget. He pressed the point that errors and bad advice in departments are rarely followed by consequences for decision-makers.
Budget process and policy failures
He highlighted inconsistent departmental figures on VAT and construction costs, and criticised the limited scope of relief schemes that excluded many who perform agricultural or transport work. O'Donoghue said the government's current approach produces delays, administrative losses and packages only after public protest.
Policy proposals and consequences
O'Donoghue urged the government to build a rainy day fund, introduce automatic capping systems for shocks, and consider investigating bad management and advice within departments. He warned that continued mismanagement will cost the state billions and carry electoral consequences at the next election.
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And today this PMB is about the cost of doing business in Ireland and that's the sectors in the Irish economy such as the farming, fisheries, construction and all general small business and every person that's working in this country and the shocks arising from events outside of this country and what we're looking at here is from the point of view is fail to prepare, prepare to fail and a method of madness if you keep doing the same thing over and over again and there's no difference, if there's no change to it, it is a form of madness. So we had COVID in this country, after that we had Ukraine war and now we have the Iranian war and every time something happens the government react but they're not proactive. We now know in the world we're living in there are shocks going to come all the time. It might be three years, might be four years, before it was a cycle of ten years different things happened but now it's getting more frequent and this government have learned nothing from this. They come on with packages after people have to go down and protest, they're in desperate situations. Small businesses closing their doors, minimum wage going up but the person on the minimum wage it gets nothing extra because inflation has passed out what the minimum wage does but the consumer ends up paying for the same thing over and over again and who is the winner of this? Government. I sat on the Budget Oversight Committee yesterday and as it transpired we had speakers, there's a two hour slot which I'm the chairperson of the Budget Oversight and I had the townsman Simon Harrison, I had Minister Jack Chambers in front of me with all his department behind him and it just didn't work out for them because I was left with 40 minutes to speak myself and I asked him different questions and I wanted to see from a point of view of how the department was working on an accountability sector and I want to know who's accountable for doing something wrong and I mentioned the Children's Hospital. The townsman was the person that signed off for the Children's Hospital. One billion over budget. Has anyone been held accountable for that? No. Has anyone in the department been held accountable for that for giving bad advice? No. But if you go to the electorate tomorrow morning you'll be held to account. So when is the ministers in this cabinet going to stand up to the department and make them accountable for bad advice? What I see this government is on a railway track and the problem is when they're on the railway track they go from A to B and if there's a problem in the middle they can't seem to negotiate, we have to stop the train, we have to do something. No, they just go from A to B. Tunnel vision, no change, shocks happening businesses every time something happens. So what could you learn? And I asked questions again yesterday, of this government could you try a cap on fuel? Could you try one sector to see could we introduce something and they said no Richard because something then would have to do without. But they didn't realise why I was asking it because I wanted to see their mindset of what they were doing. They're following the same rhetoric all the time and if you follow the same thing all the time and it doesn't change it's a sign of madness. But the madness is that the people in Ireland suffer and these people make bad decisions all the time and get away with it. If I ran my business the way this government is running the people's business I wouldn't be in business. But when you do something wrong in a department, you do something wrong in government, you get rewarded, you get shoved to a different job if you do something wrong and what you end up is failure after failure gets rewarded within departments and it's a proven fact. Look at Ischgairn, look at the setup of it. Hasn't delivered but cost the country billions. I don't need all this paperwork in front of me. Why? Because I understand the problems. I then asked the Minister of Chambers yesterday about how we could introduce something and he said Richard we'd have to put away a fund year-on-year if we had to see if to allow for shocks. Let's give the Minister a small bit of education. If you want something in life and I see people young people here in the chamber, you save for it. Chair, I guarantee you if you wanted to throughout your life, you saved for something, you didn't got something. If something went wrong you had a rainy day fund. Five years on this government has not learned that we need the rainy day fund to come out and we don't need panic when something happens. We need capping systems that if something hits a level something's introduced without this big thing that happens on television and they're all in here in the chamber fighting with each other inside in the cabinet. Where can I get money from the department? Which department can I get money out of? And then when you've got to give it out to the people, most of the people don't get it. And it's all gone in administration. It's all held up. So construction costs at the moment have gone from a hundred and twenty euros a square foot to two hundred euros a square foot in five years. That means the government in materials for those costings, their VAT rate under 23% has increased. But also that 13.5% VAT rate has increased under Labour. Now I asked the department yesterday of figures of how much has their VAT increased and their first reaction straight away, oh Richard it's got it's up to 6% this year. And before we finished our slot it had dropped to 3%. Now a department couldn't tell me in front of them and they had a panel there yesterday. A huge panel and they couldn't give me an answer to something if they had to go back and check it. So it went from 6% to 3% in the space of 40 minutes. We have to make sure. There is shocks going to happen and Ireland are going to be the first to feel it. Our fund that we asked the government to put away for a rainy day fund should be on a capping system and reintroduced out to the public when something happens. He introduced something for the agricultural sector and he said it was a 12 cent that was being introduced. And then what did the department come up with? That's based on your last year's figures over 12 months. Which then the 12 cent came down to 8. But what they could have done is put it in two half yearly slots. You have people under agriculture do silage bales everything on one side of the year and on the other side of the year you have tillage. So you have two different sectors. Not everyone that does silage and baling and hay and everything else does tillage. You have two different sectors. You also have an awful lot of companies that are down as saying that they're a plant tire on their name and they do agricultural work. They don't qualify under your scheme even though they were out cleaning the dikes, stretching ditches and all this type of work. They don't qualify for that scheme. He then came up with a scheme first and said listen we were going to give the fuel costs to the transport sector and you were only dealing with the Road Haulage Association. Road Haulage Association is 17% of the transport networks in this country. It doesn't reflect a hundred percent and I agree with what they got. But they wouldn't have got it only for the people of Ireland standing up and saying to you there was no other option. So what have we got to learn from today and what have the government got to learn today? Be proactive. Put the funds away now. What you've lost in billions on bad management and bad advice from your own government, you're going to pay for it come the next election. The department won't learn. Maybe it's time now we introduce something from the point of view of investigating bad management within bad advice that's given to government and how much it costs the state on bad advice. And see where the accountability lies on bad advice given to government which makes every person in this country suffer. Regardless of your business. This is what we're trying to achieve and I said this yesterday and this is what I got back. They don't know how to get off the railway track. This is something we've got to look at. This is something that you need to implement and as I say doing the same thing over and over again is a sign of badness. Thank you.
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