Two headlines next to eachother showing *exactly* what people mean when they say that the government is wilfully doing nothing to address the ripping off of Irish people on the cost of living

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For those on mobile:

>Minister says people should shop around instead of ‘complaining’ about cost of living

And

>Motor insurance firms face no hard sanctions for ‘anti-competitive’ behaviour

Every time there’s a debate about any cost of living issue on /r/Ireland, there tend to be a lot of pro-government posters rigidly sticking to the laissez-faire model of capitalism and asking “what exactly do you want the government to do about it?” – such debates tend to devolve into ideological shouting matches as opposed to practical discussions, as in many cases that question is more of an ideological one than a practical one – or maybe a better way of putting it is, the practical solutions favoured by both sides require an acceptance of conflicting ideological foundations before they can be properly debated.

However, I feel this example should be able to illustrate part of the issue more clearly and hopefully bridge some of this gap without descending into a debate purely about ideology.

Anti-monopolistic laws, anti-cartel laws, etc, tend to be agreed upon as necessary and morally justified by everyone but the most extreme of ideologues. So one would assume that this particular issue won’t divide between those who favour a free market and those who favour interventionalism, seeing as this particular case *seems* to be universally agreed by most of the ideological spectrum to be a case which calls for government regulation or intervention.

In that context, it should be extremely obvious why so many people would blame the government (and indeed have been blaming the government for many years) over the insurance crisis and its knock on effects on the cost of living – from car and home insurance for individuals, to ridiculously high insurance for companies providing childcare, hospitality, entertainment etc and therefore ever-rising consumer prices in those businesses as insurance costs are passed on (this, for example, is one of the biggest reasons you’ll often pay double digits for a single measure of a spirit and a mixer on a night out).

In this case, there is ideological agreement on anti-competitive measures and their necessity, there is a general acceptance (backed up by numerous journalistic exposés over the years) that the Irish insurance industry has been rigging the game for years against its clients, and that they have been able to do so more or less without consequence for that entire period of time.

In this case, the issue should be clear – there’s an ideological consensus that such behaviour should be punished, and there is an abundance of evidence detailing how rampant this behaviour is which goes back years and years. And despite this, according to one of the articles in my screenshot, there are no effective sanctions against companies found to be engaging in this behaviour, nor a mechanism for dealing with them in any meaningful way.

This is *fundamentally* a failure of government to do its job. It’s not about winning votes, it’s not about pitting one section of the electorate against another and taking a gamble as to the rewards, it’s not about legal obstacles, it’s not about avoiding a controversial issue.

It is either oure, unadulterated laziness and an unwillingness to deal with any issue that requires sitting down and doing some difficult, complex legal brainstorming and policy writing, or it is corruption. Plain and simple. They are either too lazy to bother working on the necessary frameworks to fix this problem, or they’re in bed with the bad actors in the industry and don’t want to do anything to upset them.

Hanlon’s Razor – never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity – implies the former. Historical precedent in Ireland specifically, implies a coin toss.

But the bottom line is, this is something which is 100% the government’s responsibility, 100% within the government’s remit both constitutionally and under EU law, and 100% something which the government has point blank refused to engage with in any meaningful way whatsoever. And during the five or six years that this has been a major headline issue, industries and consumers have been absolutely decimated by the insurance crisis, with story after story of services being withdrawn, iconic businesses closing, and consumers suffering because of it.

*This* is what people mean when they say “it’s the government’s fault and they’re simply refusing to do their job”. *This* is why comments such as “just shop around” from government ministers are greeted with such unimaginable anger and blowback. *This* is why the government parties don’t enjoy the kind of “bounce” parties in other jurisdictions would, for dealing with transient issues – such as the pandemic – in a way in which pollsters feel they should enjoy a boost.

Endemic issues such as this one, have been around for years and years, have had hours of television and forests worth of newspapers dedicated to them, have had who knows how many government debates dedicated to them, and have had devastating impacts on Irish society at every level.

And *nothing* has been done to even *attempt* any kind of intervention to fix the issue. Nothing.

This is why people are angry. This is why the government can’t seem to do anything right poll-wise.