Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl initiated the fresh Dáil term by openly separating politicians from the Selling Sunset bike shed, bringing widespread relief, presumably for him as well. It later emerged that a less expensive site for the €336,000 structure had been dismissed by a committee, predominantly comprised of politicians and chaired by Ó Fearghaíl.
There’s now a cross-party consensus with politicians of every colour scrambling to disassociate themselves from these instances of financial mismanagement: a children’s hospital with sky-rocketing costs; a €1.429 million bronze-tipped security cabin; the renovated Members’ Library, a subject of Michael McDowell’s writings; and the alleged hiring of a €190,000 fitness trainer.
Micheál Martin labelled the security cabin “absurd,” confusing himself once more for a Liveline caller rather than someone who has frequently held the highest office in recent years.
Ó Fearghaíl referred to the bike shed as a “deep embarrassment.”
Minister for Public Spending, Paschal Donohoe, clarified that neither he nor Minister of State for the OPW, Patrick O’Donovan, were associated with the decision on the bike shed, indicating this was made at an official level.
A jubilant Mattie McGrath retorted, “On your bikes.”
Senior politicians have more important issues to deal with than meticulously examining every detail in the cost estimate for a campus bike shelter. Hence, presumably, the task was delegated to a mixed-party committee, the Oireachtas Commission, to greenlight the general scheme in June 2021, sans any budget estimates. The commission stated this week that it “does not have any power over the approval of capital spending,” and was never informed “about the excessive spending … Simply put, the OPW is the landlord, and we are the lodgers.”
The Tánaiste has criticised the £1.4m cost of the security hut at the Government Buildings as absurd. The Office of Public Works (OPW) may operate as the landlord with the Oireachtas as its tenants, but it can’t be overlooked that these works are being carried out for the benefit of politicians. This expensive fiasco is a result of inefficient systems the OPW uses to approve expenditures.
Moreover, there is also an ongoing blame game regarding the issue of the €2.2 billion children’s hospital. The Government is quick to pin the blame on the builders. However, it is evident that someone within the government sanctioned the initial contract. This contract appears to have promoted delays and overspending since its conception in 2017, during which Simon Harris served as the health minister.
While it’s tempting to get carried away in a wave of indignation, the reality is not so dramatic. It’s certainly not akin to historical examples of grand extravagance or sharp-tongued admonitions about austerity. However, it’s still an unflattering portrayal in a time when people are concerned about their rising heating bills.
The idea of a “cost of living crisis” has largely ceased being a topic of conversation. People are coming to terms with the harsh understanding that what was once deemed a temporary crisis is now a grim and permanent status quo. It seems that not everyone is feeling the brunt of this economic shift uniformly. Tom McDonnell from the Nevin Institute rightly noted that we are transitioning into an economy defined by clear winners and losers. Despite Ireland’s significant wealth influx from Apple, it’s alarming that 17.3% of the population were living in households facing multiple forms of deprivation in 2023. Strikingly, in this prosperous nation, one out of every five children is living in poverty.
In the grand scheme, the existence of a security cabin with a copper roof or even a gold-coated bicycle storage might appear inconsequential. They, in one light, might just seem like distractions, petty subjects that arguably take up an excessive amount of newspaper column inches. This is resonant of a term from the realms of software development known as “bikeshedding”, taken from a theory proposed by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, the renowned naval historian most famous for Parkinson’s law, in other words, work invariably fills the time available for its completion. However, his 1958 book also introduced a lesser-known theory, the law of triviality, stating that the duration spent debating a matter within a corporation is inversely related to its actual significance.
To elucidate this point, Parkinson posed a scenario where a financial committee must approve a nuclear bunker, a coffee fund, and rather aptly if you’re penning a piece on the subject, a bicycle shed. He proposed that they would dedicate the minimal amount of time to the nuclear bunker, estimated at £10 million, as few people have strong opinions on appropriate nuclear bunker construction techniques. On the other hand, they would spend considerably more time on the bicycle shed, given that conceiving a cost-effective and functional bike shelter is somewhat simpler (unless you work for the OPW), and invest most of their time on the coffee budget.
But in this context, the bicycle shed and security cabin hold significance as they stand as metaphors for an additional matter. That is, a culture where individuals evade responsibility by laying blame on others. An environment of successful and unsuccessful parties. Not to mention, a governing class that seems increasingly disconnected to the electorate, despite possibly including many well-intentioned and principled individuals.
I recall a conversation with a very wealthy man, in which I asked him how it felt to be so affluent. He replied quite candidly, “I may come across as rather arrogant, but honestly, you stop keeping track after the first 15 million.” I can’t help but feel that the Government seems plagued by a similar problem.