Last Friday McCarthy admitted that ‘An Bord Snip Nua’ was a ‘political exercise’, which was used to create a climate where drastic cuts in public services would be seen as inevitable. Here Joe Higgins discusses how this lays bare the manipulation of the public debate by the government and the media.

Mr McCarthy saved for a Scottish audience a candour that he concealed from working people and the unemployed in Ireland. His admission is very revealing that ‘An Bord Snip Nua’ rather than being a body which would leave politics at the door and impartially examine the economic situation, as was the intended impression, was rather set up to create a phony distance between the political process and the decision to make cuts.

In his speech, he attributed to his, until now unstated role of influencing the official opposition parties and the media an equal importance to the actual content of his recommendations. Then the media would, in his schema, hammer home to people a view that there was no alternative to the cuts.

Let’s be clear ‘An Bord Snip Nua’ was political precisely in the way Mr McCarthy admits. However where I depart from him is the conclusions of his report. It is my and the Socialist Party’s belief, along with others on the left, in the ranks of the trade union movement and in the community organisations affected by the cuts that an alternative is necessary and possible and has to be fought for, beginning with going after the virtually untouched unearned wealth in this country and the tax breaks which benefit the super rich to the tune of billions.

Of course Mr McCarthy’s report, like NAMA and every other measure taken by the government is predicated on preserving a failed capitalist system which for them is not up for debate either!

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