Government approach to public consumption of reports findings

The commission on taxation report will be officially released today and it will be extensively covered in all medias.
There was initial talk that the findings would not be released and held for private use for the government in allowing them to make decisions in the next and following budget. But the approach eventually taken was to publish the report – indeed, more than that, they have gone to great efforts to leak it’s entire contents.

Why leak and publish the Report?

With over 250 recommendations to be published in the report,  the goverment will not be implementing all the proposals.  They also need to avoid emotive issues they could derail their budget proposals, embarass them or dislodge the government entirely ( a la the medical card fiasco in the 1st 2009 budget). so they have published and leaked the report to:

• Let the public draw their lines in the sand: What’s going to be emotive?  If it’s going to be highly emotive, they will look to discard it like some oily rag.
• Appear generous: the goverment can pick and choose from the report and appear to be making concessions to different groups.

Advance fortifications

So far three groupings have been effective in establishing their positions:

• Child Benefit: Groups have been established to protect Child Benefit from the chop.  These groups have spun out of the very large and formidable discussion groups on parenting websites such as Rollercoaster.ie and eumom.com, leading to websites such as childbenefit.info.  very organised and gaining a lot of press, the leaking of the commission will have highlighted this as a potentially exposive area that the government could do well to leave alone.
• Unions:  The union representive on the commission on taxation was the only one not to sign the final report.  It will be interesting to see how the government deal with the unions, but as their may be no acceptable middle ground.  The trick here for the government will be to avoid enormous union unrest.
• The Government: They have remained in the long grass watching the fortifications going up.  They will now be able to pick and choose their targets and avoid ambushes from previous budgets like that of the Medical card

what you should do?

We’re glad to see the report published as it gives us all a very deomocratic chance to respond.

If there is a recommendation in the report that you feel strongly about, then the government are presenting you with the opportunity to make your concerns known.  Do it before they make their decision and you could well influence their decision.