Cantillon: erudite reports butter no parsnips

The European Commission’s latest report on Ireland hardly made waves. Published at 10pm on Friday just as polling concluded, the report promptly disappeared down the black hole of endless election fallout.

As previously noted here – before the result came in – the commission’s call for a broader property tax and its criticism of the decision to suspend related valuations was always likely to be met with a political shrug in Dublin.

The same goes for simultaneous warnings from Brussels about inadequate capital investment, at serious risk of being underfunded for another three years apparently as priority is given in medium-term plans to tax cuts and current spending. Quite what happens to such plans now is anyone’s guess.

Take note that Ireland’s paucity in capital planning and the recent emphasis on tax cuts and current spending follows years of grinding retrenchment. This was seen as a political necessity – no more, no less – and rather obviously so. No external institution knows this better than the commission, of course. But that never dimmed its observations before.

If the inconclusive outcome of the election shows anything, it shows that inadequate public provision across the board and years of tax increases are a recipe for public disaffection. The commission had a star pupil in the outgoing Government but the very people the Government served saw something less than the stars in its performance.

The bruised and battered denizens of Fine Gael and Labour might well point out the terms of trade are indeed different for bureaucrats in the tower blocks of Brussels, Frankfurt and Washington. Erudite economic reports are one thing. Reports from the electoral front are quite another – and, in a democracy, the findings of voters are binding.

Parsnips, butter, etc: these are the things that might come to mind these days. There’s a lesson there for commission, surely.