There is something very wrong with the economy of a country
when money is spent extravagantly on what most people would
see as of much lesser importance than schools, hospitals,
social services, welfare agencies, police and law and order,
which never seem to have enough money to do their essential
tasks. We pay dearly for people who hold higher offices in
Government-sponsored and appointed bodies and quangos, whose
return for their cost appears to be of little consequence
in the administration of Northern Ireland. We are only economically
conscious when money should be spent on what is crucially
important to all of us. Even at times making good, essential,
causes dependent on voluntary skill and the deep commitment
which responds selflessly to human need. A constancy in this
society is the imbalances between salaries and wages, chairpersons,
executive officers and their staffs; and workers in ordinary,
even menial, jobs of greater significance. We can not assess
the worth of the one, for we see little evidence that their
appointments produce the results they promise. We have no
problem recognising the benefits from the good work done by
ordinary people paid and unpaid, especially in the caring
professions and occupations. "When we read facts and
figures we are constantly reminded that many are rich at the
expense of the poor. We have no need even of simple arithmetic
to accept the fact that money misdirected is money lost. Lost
from those who need it to save lives, improve living standards
of people, educate and train the young to enable them to earn
their living with gained skills and so to make them good,
useful, and proud citizens. Recent criticisms of the cost
of the Police Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, with her very well
paid staff, and of the Parades Commission, with its chairman
on £50,000 plus expenses appear to us to be fully justified.
And these are but two of the Government-appointed bodies whose
existence is seen as unnecessary by many people. The people
have no say in their selection and appointment for that is
done by a government with no electorate mandate here, because
Labour refuses to offer itself for election in Northern Ireland.
The claim that the SDLP is its sister party is a nonsense.
There were never more than a few Labour men, certainly Gerry
Fitt and Paddy Devlin, in it and that only at its beginnings.
The party has long been as green as Sinn Fein, and is now
trying to outdo it in its republican attitudes and responses
to what is happening here. Because our emphasis now is on
the use and misuse of money every effort must be made by unionists
who suffer most from Government decisions, to stop this wastage
and to be fair and just in its dealings with all the people
here. Unlike others we do not ask for preferential treatment
- they have been singularly successful in getting what they
wanted by means well known to everybody - just fair, honest,
government, that to which we are entitled in a properly ordered
society. The spokespersons for the overpaid have an impossible
task as they try to justify the unjustifiable. We have no
difficulty making a plea for the more efficient and effective
use of money. We think the case we plead is proven on the
evidence of the media, facts and figures unquestioned, but
with attempts by the beneficiaries and their apologists seeking
to justify the salaries that are paid.
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