The Kettle's Boyled - Are you going to eat that, or what?
Brendan McDonagh was a solid performer in NAMA and would undoubtedly have helped cut through the lethargy and red tape.
Did you ever see a child who was given something to eat that they didn’t particularly like, or that they weren’t hungry enough to want? They move the food around the plate, doing everything except pick up a forkful and put it in their mouths, often accompanying the performance with exaggerated sighs.
In my younger days, if you did that somebody else would grab the food and eat it, or it would be swept off the plate and into the dog’s dish. The notion of doing otherwise would have been an alien concept, such behaviour wouldn’t have been tolerated for a minute. Nowadays, of course, such drastic action could result in an urgent call to Childline, or see a social worker arriving at the house. Instead, the child is taken gently aside and asked about their feelings, and if maybe they would like a few sweets.
The current Dail is in place since the beginning of the year but they remind me of nothing as much as that child and the uneaten dinner. Instead of going after the urgent jobs, they move them around their desks, wishing they would go away. And the more pressing the task, it seems the more likely that somebody will find a way to delay acting on it.
There are exceptions. The department of Agriculture and Forestry was faced with one of the worst storms in living memory just as the new Dail was bedding in, but both Ministers got stuck in and the progress is nothing short of remarkable. Thousands of hectares of storm-felled trees have been cleared and the timber shipped out to markets on the European mainland, getting cash flowing to the farmers and ensuring that the glut of timber on the market didn’t collapse prices at home.
The Health and Education Ministers also seem to be moving at a pace, wading through the more pressing issues, but where is the Housing Minister? He started with a flourish, rightly deciding to appoint a housing supremo to clear the logjams in the system. He picked the right person too, Brendan McDonagh was a solid performer in NAMA and would undoubtedly have helped cut through the lethargy and red tape. But politics got in the way, along with a healthy dose of begrudgery. Opposition both within government and opposition mostly centred on the salary being paid to the NAMA boss, and the initiative crumbled.
But the deal would have been cheap at the price if McDonagh had delivered results. Instead, it seems likely somebody cheaper will fill the role, and so that food will continue to be pushed around the plate while thousands of people wait to buy homes. He is on a salary equivalent to about that of three TDs, but it seems his cost would have delivered far better value for money.
