Brendan Hoban: We must be careful with our Apple windfall  

Western People 24.9.2024

Have you noticed that, despite continuing to plummet in the polls, Sinn Féiners are smiling again. Probably, I suspect, for two reasons. One is all that delicious Apple money that fell from the Apple tree and arrived unexpectedly on our shores – as if from Santa Claus.

Some years ago we thought that the sumptuous sum of €13 billion was going to swell even more the bulging coffers of the state. Then the Irish government said, No thank you very much it’s not our money. Then the EU authorities insisted on us taking it, whether we wanted it or not. And not just €13 billion, an impossibly unimaginable figure, which meant we had even more coming in interest, an accumulative wind-fall of more than €14.1 billion in all – which we’re told will arrive in the public purse in a matter of months. (Has Apple not heard of Bank Transfers?)

The other reason for the SF smiles is that the housing crisis seems now to be accepted – if the opinion polls are accurate – as the number one priority of the electorate as a general election looms.

The extra Apple money solves a difficulty SF has had for years when they promised everything to everyone but often seemed to have no idea how much all their populist generosity would cost or where the money was going to come from.
Now with €14.1 billion extra available, the populist conundrum has been solved: how much will thousands of new homes actually cost? €14 billion stupid! Where will SF (if in government) get all that money? Under the Apple tree stupid!

Here’s a question. If you won the Lotto what would you do with, say, a €4 million euro prize? It’s a question with multiple possible answers falling somewhere between twin possible extremes – spend the lot on a party or put some away for the rainy day. In other words, the short view or the long view. The answer depends on where you’re coming from – between the extremes of someone who needs a house for their family and an investment banker in thrall to one particular form of economic wisdom.
Two realities impinge on deciding what to do with the Apple money. One is that there are now polls of every description almost every few days depicting the latest popular preference of the every-increasing demands of a fussy electorate. There is now a constant wealth of information on voters’ intentions with clear indications about what they want, expect or demand the new government to do. At least for today or this week!

It’s the price we pay for our modern communications and media networks, internet, social media, radio and television and, of course, the mass opinion-polling we take for granted today. Now everyone’s opinion – regardless of common sense (or other mitigating factors) – receives attention (sometimes, maybe often) beyond its due.
When Abraham Lincoln memorably proposed government ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’, communications and media networks were basic and ineffective with no facility for the mass opinion-polling we take for granted today.
The difficult truth now is that while ‘of the people’ and ‘for the people’ seem to make democratic sense, the notion of direct government ‘by the people’ makes no sense at all because the obvious truth is that the public is notoriously fickle, changing their minds and, with respect, many are incapable of even understanding some of the choices that government financial experts are faced with.

What do the people want from the upcoming budget announcement on October 1? Some want lower taxes. Others want better services. And some want lower taxes and better services, even when it’s clear that you can’t have both. Some want a stringent response to climate change but believe that farmers, for example, shouldn’t have to change their practices. Others want more housing but would be unhappy if they were pressurised into selling land or even if a new housing estate was proposed near them. And there are some who want everything and some who clearly don’t know what they want.

There is a point at which governments have to make decisions, not based on the often contradictory demands of a volatile electorate because, as Matthew Parris wrote recently in the London Times, ‘public demand is evanescent, often unrealistic, even contradictory, and frequently plain daft’.

An example of this daft madness is the often vacuous outpourings of self-styled leaders of the anti-immigrant movement who spout the greatest nonsense and imagine that the louder they shout and the more obnoxious they are in confronting politicians the more people will cheer them. What they don’t seem to understand is that spouting political simplicities and presuming they can speak for the people  – ‘Ballydehob says NO to immigrants’ (even though the people of Ballydehob said no such thing) – simply convinces those they are trying to impress that such self-appointed ‘leaders’ need to be given as wide a possible berth as possible.

Politicians who try to bring such extremists with them are effectively giving a public platform and an undue status to malcontents who will never be satisfied no matter how politicians twist and turn to appease them. And while politicians will instinctively always try to ‘run with the hare and hunt with the hound’ in the interests of maximising their vote, appeasing discontents is, what a Northern politician once controversially described as, ‘the dangerous practice of feeding the crocodile’.

What is needed is an adult response to the present windfall of the Apple tax with a responsible allocation based on need, not least the long-term implications that the mixed benefit the windfall brings with it – including the inevitable damage to the country’s reputation (deserved or undeserved) for dodgy forms of tax relief. Strident populist voices encouraging the equivalent of a booze-up need to be stoutly resisted.
With the Apple €14 billion dangling before political parties now framing their election manifestos, we need sensible and responsible leadership in our prosperous times.