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ABSTRACT
Clientelism, pork-barrel politics and ‘pulling a stroke’ are important topics in Irish political science, and growing evidence demonstrates that Irish government ministers deliver disproportionate capital investments for their constituencies in grant allocations. Smarter Travel, a new policy area in the sustainability agenda, began providing capital funding for cycling projects in 2012 and offers a study of clientelism in a new field. This article shows that in 2012 and 2014, the Minister with responsibility for commuter and public transport overruled civil servant recommendations to fund four cycling-based projects in his own constituency and in another constituency immediately prior to a Dáil by-election. The allocation of €27 million in National Cycle Network and Active Travel Towns funding is examined using Freedom of Information requests and the role of the Minister is highlighted. This study of pork in a new field reveals some of the dynamics between the civil service and a government minister and suggests a process of manipulating funding schemes to deliver largesse. Clientelism and the consequent distortion of funding objectives are shown to be in conflict with the effective implementation of cycling policies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. It is unclear whether this marked a fundamental shift in the direction of transport policy (inspired by sustainability) or a temporary change (inspired by cost-efficiency in a period of low capital investment). For further discussion, see Rau et al. (Citation2015).
2. Later promoted to Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government.
3. The Freedom of Information Act 2014 widened the range of state bodies covered by the previous Act and withdrew the standard €15 fee (although other charges still apply) and Ireland's FOI is considered to have a comparatively high level of use and disclosure (Hazell & Worthy, Citation2010). FOI is a useful resource for academic researchers, particularly in the field of political science, as it provides access to political decision-making and quantitative evidence on which to build an argument (see Bourke et al., Citation2012 for guidance on FOI requests for academic researchers) (Savage & Hyde, Citation2014).
4. In a recent example of patronage in the transport sector, one TD lobbied the Taoiseach to have a member of the board of the National Transport Authority reappointed on the basis that she was ‘a woman, bright, intelligent and not bad looking either’ (Minihan, Citation2015).
5. The approach in this paper is to explore the strokes pulled by a Minister in a form of pork barrel and clientelist spending. This includes both the Minister's own constituency (and certain towns within that constituency), but also the constituency of an upcoming by-election. The role of these practices, the paper argues, is to win votes for both the Minister and his party, implying some level of quid pro quo.
6. One Galway County Councillor acquired the nickname ‘Stroke’ for negotiating his way onto the party ticket for the 1979 Local Election and subsequently used the nickname on general election literature. However, after he was convicted (later successfully appealed) for misappropriating funds for fencing his own farm, he asked the media to refrain from using the nickname ‘Stroke’ as it was now being used in a different context (McDonald, Citation2008). He has been returned at every local election since 1979.
7. The Minister approved €5.3 million in state funding for the leisure centre from the Sports Capital and Local Authority Swimming Pools fund and officially opened the centre two years prior to the election. The leisure centre was used as a count centre for the 2011 General Election.
8. The Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism existed between 2002 and 2010. Currently, this brief is divided between the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.
9. The criteria for the National Cycle Network scheme were: separation from motorised traffic, length, attractiveness, tourism potential, recreation potential, transport potential, cost and economic impact, integration with policy and public transport, promotion and monitoring, local authority commitment, deliverability.
10. Tipperary is a five-seat constituency created by merging two three-seat constituencies, Tipperary North and Tipperary South, as recommended by the Constituency Commission in 2012.
11. The criteria for the Active Travel Towns scheme were: town size, walking and cycling strategy, local community commitment, behaviour change proposals, smarter travel track record, targets, costing and evaluation.