NEWSPAPER columnists would be mightily boring people if they all agreed with one another; the wonder is that we do not disagree with one another publicly more often. The year is advanced enough already to start dissent within the dovecote, and so...
My colleague Mary Holland, writing recently of changing circumstances in Ireland, said: "There's a growing temptation to think that anyone who doesn't have a job is lazy, or worse still, probably cheating the social welfare system. We saw these attitudes hardening perceptibly in the recent highly publicised crackdown on relatively small numbers of welfare fraudsters. It's an all too easy step from that to believing that the poor are primarily to blame, for their poverty, and thus for their increasingly hopeless exclusion from the rest of society."
It might well be an easy step, but I am unaware of anybody making it. No doubt there are Victorian old savages stomping: around the parlour, cursing the presumptions of the poor, but, they do not speak their prejudices aloud. But there are people - e.g. me - who question the benign consensus that dole fraud is a fantastic fiction created by heartless "Thatcherites" who detest the welfare state (though contrary to the core of this myth, Thatcher actually increased the size and scope of the British welfare state).
I suspect that many people who think dole fraud is virtually non existent do so - as I once did - for lingering quasi socialist beliefs in the intrinsic virtues of the working classes ("real people") over the middle classes, or because they are ideologically opposed to private enterprise. Such people would maintain that dole fraud is minimal compared to white collar crime, and the Dunne affair has come like a blissful deus ex machina for these people, so affording them the opportunity to forget the quite appalling revelations by the Central Statistics Office last September.
Incomparable criminality
The truth is that nothing, but nothing, that is done in the private sector compares with the state funded criminality of dole fraud, which does not, as Mary maintains, involve "relatively small numbers". It drains scores of millions of pounds from the Exchequer annually, yet for ideological reasons has been immune to investigation for over a generation and to inquire into the possibility of major dole fraud was to invite searing allegations of utilitarian heartlessness. The patient might have cancer; but because even to investigate the possibility, would offend the patient's political sensibilities - it was, after all, reactionary to suggest that, this patient had cancer - benign inertia prevailed.
Benign inertia, outside Lourdes, does not cure cancers. The actual science of social observation was distorted for political reasons, just as Lysenko's fantasies distorted scientific development in the Soviet Union. Finally, the symptoms of cancer grew so outrageous and undeniable that an administration which is effectively governed by left wing parties was obliged to make some politically incorrect analyses. They proved what any of us who have ever employed a builder or a painter - anyone who runs a small business and tries to get employees - could have said already. Dole fraud is endemic in this country, as tax fraud is; and for comparable reasons - an excessive state apparatus which levies such taxes as to cause people to seek the havens of illegality.
There is a difference. Tax fraud, for the left, is politically unacceptable. Dole fraud is, by and large, politically acceptable. In reality, the two are pretty much the same thing, not least in loss to the State, as was revealed by the CSO inquiry. One in ten on the dole had a full time job over 40 per cent did not regard themselves as unemployed at all over a quarter of the dole claimers were not at the addresses given; and another quarter of those surveyed, since they were not looking for work, or for other reasons, did not qualify for the dole.
There are all sorts of justifications for examining this problem, not least the corrosively divisive effect its consequences have within the working class areas where most dole fraud is centred. The person on the dole not merely achieves a double income, and neither incomes taxed; medical cards are instantly available; and the double burden of both that person's dole, and that person's failure to contribute to the Exchequer must fall on the shoulders of the poorly paid honest worker.
Ben's disbursements
It is not good enough to sweep this under the carpet because of the Ben Dunne affair. Whatever moneys might have been inappropriately disbursed would not compare with the gush of money illegally claimed weekly by people on the dole who do it simply because they can do it; as I would do. For the small scale builder to enter a lawful existence is to enter a world of VAT forms and insurance, PRSI and PAYE. This State did not insist absolutely that the law abiding had it easier than his lawless cousin. The easier political option was to ignore the problem or to denounce those who wanted to investigate it as reactionary. Know nothingism was elevated into a public virtue; and know nothing has guided public policy to the point that, as Proinsias De Rossa, no less, pointed out, dole fraud is costing us £100 million a year, or more.
Grown up states
Efficient, grown up states should not be afraid to discuss the issues and examine the problems of living in a growing and changing society; though I do not yet believe Mary's assertion that we are poised to outstrip Britain economically. One year's higher absolute productivity - the basis for the claim - does not mean we are about to become richer. The wealth of a"nab&n, as with an individual, is not based just on one year's earnings, but also on its assets in terms of resources, investments, savings and untapped, economic and personal potential. Even if Tony O'Reilly ceased work and foreswore all dividends, it would be a while and a bit before I could say I was economically out stripping him. Sleep well, Anthony for the time being anyway.