Let me congratulate Michael Martin on his election as leader of Fianna Fail. He is a clever, thoughtful man who has succeeded in a party which does not always esteem thoughtfulness, and which sometimes seems to pride itself on being visceral, tribal and anti-intellectual.
His selection marks a watershed in the history of the organization. He will probably be the last Uachtaran Fianna Fail to be drawn from the generation who rose to prominence during the Haughey era.
The young Michael Martin’s ascent through the ranks as leader of Ogra FF and member of the national executive all took place during this time. While I know him to be a man of the highest personal probity, and he has as minister and now as leader, always distanced himself from the whiffy antics of some party principals, the timing of his ascent suggests that he too, bought into the then-prevalent theory that loyalty to party took precedence over scrutiny of the leadership.
Some have suggested that he will be the first Fianna Fail Chief who will never become Taoiseach, a remarkable piece of hubris in the face of history. The electorate will likely flash the crosses and garlic at most Fianna Fail candidates in the forthcoming election, but it seems unlikely that they will put the stake in the heart of that organization. While I hope we get a new Fine Gael/Labour administration, they will inherit such an economic mess that it seems all too plausible that it might serve a single term and that Michael Martin might be Taoiseach yet.
Dismissing his curriculum vitae as an irrelevance to our future thus seems unwise, and it is to his resume as Minister for Health that I will now turm. Deputy Martin himself is aware that his tenure in Health is under renewed scrutiny, and in one of his first speeches as party leader, he issued a ringing defence of his stewardship of that critically important department.
His major achievement in Health was the Smoking Ban, in which he takes justifiable pride. This act was one of the best pieces of health-related legislation ever introduced in this country or indeed anywhere in the world, and he deserves great credit for proposing and implementing something so radical, so worthwhile and so innovative.
It was also real smart politically. It was a low-risk high-yield initiative in a country where 70% of the voters were non-smokers.
Other problems which required the willingness to take political risk were, sadly not addressed, and I for one am cross that in his recent speech Deputy Martin was so dismissive of the genuinely needed reforms that have been proposed by Fine Gael and Labour, reforms which would give us a fair single-tier health care system, a system where genuine quality and efficiency could be incentivised. I hope to analyse these proposals coming up to the election.
The health landscape which then-Minister Martin assumed in 2000 was full of politically challenging problems. The health system was and is, mediocre in quality, inefficient in its use of resources and highly unfair. We had, and still have, the largest number of medical schools but the lowest number of medical specialists per head of population of any Western country. Tellingly we also had the highest number of hospitals but the lowest number of hospital beds. In other words, our country was stuffed with small critically understaffed hospitals. We had, and still have waiting lists which would be considered incredible in any other western nation.
These problems needed radical reform, but none was forthcoming under Minister Martin. Instead we had bureaucratisation. Where we needed more cancer specialists to improve quality, we instead got more quality inspectors and administrators. Where we needed to reform a system which was relatively well funded but which had awful waiting lists, we got a new bureaucracy, the National Treatment Purchase Fund.
At the core of our public governance is a dysfunctional interface between inexpert ministers and senior civil servants who have generally risen to the top of their departments on the strength of their adroitness at navigating its bureaucracy. Minister Martin like so many of our politicians of all parties, has spent most of his career at this interface.
History gives us examples of politicians who capped mediocre early legislative careers with subsequent periods of greatness in leadership, such as Harry Truman, JFK and Churchill. Unfortunately history and in particular recent Irish history also gives us many examples of mediocre legislators who became mediocre leaders.
Which will he be?
