Ireland reacted quickly enough when the financial crisis hit. You could argue all day about the decisions that were taken. But the point is that the last two governments made decisions – we had emergency legislation, big tax rises and spending cuts and the rescue of the banking system.
So why is it that we can nationalise a bank overnight but it will have taken us 14 years to plan and build a children's hospital – assuming Minister Leo Varadkar is right and, barring an asteroid strike, the project will be finished by 2020?
And this is not unusual.
It now looks like the national broadband plan, to provide a high-speed service to the 30 per cent of Irish houses to which it is not available, will not be completed until 2022, a full decade after its announcement, after a delay in awarding the contract was announced this week.
Even in policy areas which do not require anything to be actually built, vested interests and government inertia can delay things interminably.
The Competition Authority reported in 2008 on the urgent need to shake up the legal profession. Eight years later we have watered down legislation not fully implemented.
Nor is delay confined to new policy and projects.
The last government brought to a fine art the appointment of commissions and committees to investigate controversial matters ranging from Garda controversies to deals done by IBRC to sell off assets, including Siteserv. There was hardly a retired senior judge left in the country not hired to look into something.
These investigations either took way longer than expected or, in the case of IBRC, ran into the sand.
The politics of delay means bad government – vital projects are not delivered or investigations not completed.
They are also bad politics. The lack of progress on rural broadband left the last government open to accusations of not acting fast enough to help regions outsider the main cities to develop economically.The failure to get anywhere at all in the IBRC investigation contributed to the voter cynicism which hit the government hard come the general election.
A fudge cooked up to get past a crisis almost inevitably causes severe indigestion a few months later.
Now we are at it again as a deal is negotiated to try to allow the formation of a new government.
The commission being proposed to examine water charging is one of the finest examples yet of the ability of our political system to put off making a decision.
Broken
It probably means water charges are gone and are never coming back. But it will take ages to finally decide this. And so, again, we put off finding a way to fix something that is broken.
Irish Water was a good idea badly implemented. Better, surely, to fix it than abandon the entire foundation of the enterprise – a user-charging model.
If the issue ever emerges from the commission and the subsequent Oireachtas committee, there is no way the Dáil will vote to bring back charges. The negotiators, apparently more worried by Sinn Féin and other anti-water charge groups than by the likely ire of the people who have paid their bills, have come up with a terrible mess.
As well as how we will fund investment in water and waste, this is toxic politics. It means the whole issue will be left like a festering sore infecting the next Dáil.
Already it is causing dissent, with strong comments from Labour's Alan Kelly and Fine Gael's Leo Varadkar.
Sooner or later it will come back to bite Fine Gael in government and Fianna Fáil as it decides whether to continue to prop up the administration from the opposition benches.
And what on earth will the “commission” look at. Water is either funded from central taxation or from charges. Charges are either flat fees or pay-per-usage. We already have a host of consultants’ reports on the whole issue.
There were comments during the week from some politicians that “everyone” was talking about water charges and so the Dáil must be allowed to debate it. Really? People have much greater concerns than the €3 a week in water charges.
Private insurance
Motor insurance costs have rocketed, costing a multiple of water charges for most and requiring urgent government action. Health insurance costs are sky high for those on private insurance, and queues are ever longer for those who rely on the public system.
The housing crisis is hitting on a range of front – from those forced to live in a hotel room or bed and breakfast to young people with increasingly unaffordable rents. These are the issues people are talking about.
Unfortunately none of these problems are easily solved. All risk falling into the same bucket as the children’s hospital and the national broadband plan – complex policy issues allowed to drift and where nothing much happens for a long time.
Maybe it all has its roots in our clientelist system where politicians don’t want to take on any interest group, and where lobbying – from powerful professional bodies, local interests or just about anyone who makes noise – can delay progress endlessly.
Just look at the complex interplay of local politics and medical interest groups that have delayed the children’s hospital project, or the guerilla war waged by the legal profession against reform plans.
When the breakthrough in forming a new government is a fudge over a vital area of national investment, it does not give you much confidence that anything much is going to change.