Making it up?

IT’S hard to escape the feeling that the Government is making things up as it goes.

Every single controversial measure seems designed to cause maximum confusion. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe they are almost doing it on purpose.

The lead up to last week’s agreement on the heads of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013 is just one example. It was suggested in advance that up to six professionals would be called upon to assess the suicide risk in a pregnant woman.

After the Cabinet’s lengthy deliberations, it turned out that just three experts would be required in these circumstances. So essentially it’s the same proposal, albeit a watered down version of what we were initially led to believe.

But it allows the Government to present the outcome as a compromise. For the Labour Party, in particular, the optics are good. I’m sure they were delighted to read reports in the papers about Minister James Reilly apparently having to back down to their demands.

The introduction of the Local Property Tax (LPT) also seems to be an exercise in mass confusion. The Revenue’s property valuation guidelines have come in for much criticism due to the inconsistencies and anomalies they have thrown up for many householders.

Self-assessment should mean self-assessment. Quite frankly, we would have been better off getting the valuations on our properties by ourselves. But instead of getting caught up in the debate about the rights and wrongs of a property tax, we are now all in a flap about valuations, return dates and Revenue penalties for inaccurate assessments.

We’ve almost forgotten that we were unhappy about the LPT in the first place. If that was the Government’s intention, then job done.

Last year’s ham-fisted introduction of the e100 Household Charge also distracted us from the reality of having to pay it.

It seems that if you can create enough smoke to cause maximum confusion, you’ll never be too concerned about the source of the fire. Some of our politicians are either incredibly incompetent or supremely clever. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.