Subscribe
From the Deposit Re-turn Scheme to Uisce Éireann, the Irish government has constructed a parallel economy to collect consumer funds, that answers to nobody and produces nothing. Ireland’s quango culture has been allowed to run amock and as the State faces looming fiscal difficulties there is an immediate need to dismantle the sector entirely.
This week a Government deputy discovered a fact that Opposition TDs and the general public have understood for years. Fine Gael TD Michael Murphy from Tipperary sought answers from Uisce Éireann after at least 11,000 of his constituents had issues with their water supply. Uisce Éireann’s response was, unsurprisingly, described by Murphy as not “forthcoming”.
Uisce Éireann is a publicly owned and publicly funded body with an annual budget around €1.8 billion. However, owing to its statutory independence, Parliamentary Questions cannot be submitted to question Uisce Éireann. Murphy is right to call for a change to that status, in his words “operational independence cannot mean an absence of democratic accountability.” Unfortunately for Fine Gael who have begun to criticise Uisce Éireann, they are forgetting one crucial fact: they were the ones who created it.
In 2011 Fine Gael criticised Ireland for being the land of a thousand quangos, publishing communications calling for the number to be curtailed. At that time Ireland had almost 1,000 state agencies, and the party rightfully committed to their abolition or amalgamation on a case-by-case basis. After entering government in 2011, by 2014 Fine Gael had only abolished 45, and created 33 new ones including Irish Water. Now Gaelicised as Uisce Éireann, that statutory body is under criticism by Fine Gael for its lack of transparency. The irony behind this case is something characteristic of Irish politics in the modern age. It is incomprehensible that a party could promise to torch the quangos and turn around to create new ones only to criticise them years later.
That is precisely the problem with Irish politics. There is a recurring pattern of quango creation which is no mere accident, the creation of such bodies allow elected representatives the opportunity to hedge their bets on the fortunes or failures of a public service while more taxpayer money is sent down the drain.
A more egregious example is the Deposit Re-turn Scheme. It was created in 2022 by drinks producers and approved by the government to run the scheme starting February of 2024. Now every bottle and can purchased in the State carries a “deposit” of 15 or 25 cents depending on its volume. This euphamistically named “deposit” is effectively a voluntary tax; in theory a consumer could get their money back by recycling their bottles in machines located at dedicated sites. In practice that simply is not the case, whether it is broken machines or lack of time to travel to a recycling site for a return value of 5 or so euros, there are a great deal of people whose schedules prevent them from claiming back their funding.
The money obtained by Re-turn was taken directly from Irish consumers at the till, it never passed through the Exchequer nor did it fund a single public service. Instead the funds sit with a company whose Government approval runs for ten years with a review scheduled each third year of the scheme. Owing to the nature of the scheme’s quango operations, just like Uisce Éireann, it is unaccountable to parliamentary oversight.
There is a further question of who actually benefits from the scheme. Re-turn has not disclosed what its chief executive, Ciarán Foley, earns for his position in the organisations. However, its accounts show that five key management personnel, including Foley, were paid a combined €1.1 million in 2024. The Irish Times reported this year that the chief executive and board shared a 16 per cent increase in pay. Re-turn said the increase was 3.4 percent, but declined to provide the figures to back that claim.
What makes Re-turn different from other semi-State bodies in Ireland like charities or non-profits? Even other quangos are known to publish their leaders’ income on the basis of public interest. The fundamental problem with this scheme is its existence in the first place, it is a perfect example of an economically unproductive group formed with governmental approval for the interests of a few companies or directors at the expense of the entire Irish consumer base. At the very least, the Irish public are entitled to these types of groups’ data in granular detail.
However this issue is not just a matter of public spending waste or privatised taxes disguised as recycling programmes. It cuts to the core of Ireland’s economic misdevelopment and the demonstrable productivity crisis the country faces. Every quango in the state generates an ecosystem of registration requirements, reporting and legal obligations, compliance teams, consultants, comms staff and director fees.
That trend writ large over a State like Ireland with a small population and dense urban settlements steers employers and employees into sectors which deliberately do not create economic value. As a result the country now prioritises training and favouritises skillsets suited towards navigating its ever expanding institutional labyrinth.
Ireland’s corporate tax receipt wealth has been squandered because it was never re-invested into the country’s natural economic potential. The government has not invested, bar a few politically influential exceptions, in Irish industries to export goods or raise wages for working people. Rather they have chosen to shackle the economy to intermediary bodies that grind the productivity of the country to a halt, creating perverse fiscal incentives for low-income households to remain unemployed and dependent on the country’s generous welfare payments.
This warping of Irish economic incentives has created a wider issue with the workforce in the country, as corporate and public life are intertwined and in lockstep for their admiration of managerial professionalism. Ireland has produced, and in some cases imported, a class of company executives credentialed by business schools or corporations themselves. One might think this would be fortunate for Ireland, having well trained entrepreneurs is a boon for any economy. The issue is that the C-suite management culture is not about business productivity and instead an exercise in sophisticated sophistry.
The C-suite, in Ireland at least, performs ritualistic supervisory functions while an organisation is run by others. The workers create and deliver the goods or services, while accountants ensure fiscal integrity and lawyers maintain legal compliance. For successful companies in other countries, the C-suite are supposed to be the drivers who direct the group to success. In a competitive firm, executives who fail are replaced and subject to investor scrutiny; but in quango revenue is guaranteed by statute and competition is excluded by design. It follows naturally that quangos have become the natural habitat of the mediocre forces that plague the Irish Republic and its economy.
Ireland does not need another opaque report into the management of state aided agencies or companies, nor will a pledge to slash and rename a few in a smoke-and-mirrors reform. The country needs an immediate end to quango culture altogether. In short, the State should take responsibility for its administration and free enterprise should be independent. In practice that should mean a sunset rule on the existence of every State agency pending any direct Dáil vote to renew it. Ministerial responsibility should be absolute and agencies directly accountable to parliamentary inquiry. Ireland would do well to end taxation by indirect means, if the country needs to raise revenue it should be decided by voters at the ballot box. If none of these measures are introduced Ireland will continue to function as a washing machine economy where consumer and voter funds are washed throughout the Irish private-public managerial-complaince nexus until there is nothing left to spend on the public interest.