Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

The Ten Commandments may not be a popular document these days. There is some dispute about numbering, but general agreement about the content. In the version used by Jews, members of the Orthodox community as well as Anglicans there is commandment number 8, while for Roman Catholics and Lutherans the ccorresponding commandment is commandment number : Thou shalt not steal.”

Amongst the many business books on my shelf is one called “House of Lies”. Its subtitle is “How Management Consultants steal your watch and then tell you the time.” I believe the word “management” should be removed: all types of consultants are engaged in a collective act of grand larceny which continues and to which no one seems to have any desire or ability to call a halt.

The idea of consultancy in theoretical terms is fine. Not all organisations can possibly have the necessary skills or  experience to solve every problem that arrises; so it is understandable that such knowledge and experience is bought in and acquired. Yet the problem is that the existence of such knowledge and experience is seldom if ever a prerequisite in the choice of consultants, especially in Ireland. My experience of consultants is confined to the Irish public sector, an area in which they seem to thrive. It is also confined to one local authority in Ireland: Cavan  County Council and specifically to the area of heritage.

I recall when I worked for Cavan County Museum the awe that was supposed to be inspired by a visit from a heritage consultant. I am an open-minded sort of guy and I made no prior judgments. The heritage consultant turned out to be a loud, brash Canadian, someone with a big attitude. He was based in London and proclaimed how much he loved coming to Ireland and how much he regretted that such visits were so infrequent.  We were treated to an in-depth description of the previous evening he had spent in Dublin in one of the city’s finest hotels, and not forgetting a visit to the Abbey Theatre. He then boasted that he had never been in Cavan before. Over a working lunch he then began to expand upon his expertise and explain to us what we should be doing. He stated: “On the way down to Cavan from that village by the lake [Virginia I suggested, he seemed somewhat put out by the interjection of someone as lowly as me] I noted that there are lots of cows in the fields, so in the museum exhibits on dairying must take pride of place.” I felt somewhat put out by this. I had been born and brought up in the county, so unless I was a complete retard I would have known the important of dairying to the local economy. What had Arthur Lough tried to do at Killashandra in the 1890s only form a dairy co-operative? But this jumped-up idiot was being paid big bucks to tell me and other inhabitants of the county what was important, as if we couldn’t possibly know ourselves. There was only one way to deal with him I felt.

Rather than inscribe with bowed heads each one of the jewels that fell from this guru’s lips, I looked at him quizzically and asked in apparently genuine bemusement:

“Cows?”

“Er … yes they were cows” he answered.

“Near Virginy?” [the local pronunciation of Virgina] He was obviously uncomfortable here. This was an unnatural break in the “me talk-you listen routine to which he was accustomed, so I decided to put him out of his misery.

“Ah, now I know” I said, clapping my hands. “That was some of the Maguire lads from Billis; they’re rehearsing for the pantomime.”

(My boss subsequently took me aside and suggested that if I wanted to take the rest of the day off he wouldn’t object. I took him up on the offer. He felt as uncomfortable about the situation as I did, but it hadn’t been his decision to bring in consultants. He later showed me some of the “reports” produced by this heritage  consultant’s company – for he was no one-man-band, and I agreed that they were rubbish and unusable.)

I had one more experience of a heritage consultant employed by Cavan County Council. The latter body had decided to help the local Catholic bishop write a book about a well-known historical site. In an awesome display of the unity of Church and State they wanted to provide him with much of the historical research, which he could then pass off as his own work. The building in question dated from the late medieval period,  an epoch of which I am a sort of expert (I’m not being conceited here; if you’ve wasted time gaining insights into a historical era it’s only natural that you occasionally wanted your ten seconds of fame.) Had either the County Council or the bishop approached me directly for information I would have given it to them free of charge. But did the Council do this? No, in time- honoured fashion they approached a Dublin-based heritage consultant to do the work. I knew the “lady” and a former colleague (actually a low-down creep who subsequently worked for her)warned me against having any dealings with her, telling me: ”You’d want to watch her. She’ll screw ya Ciaran.”

I believe she approached the creep I mentioned to do the work, but to his credit (and he hasn’t much) he told her to get lost and that I was the real expert on the topic. And so she finally approached me,  came to me. I was genuinely hurt that my local authority had not contacted me directly but did not mind giving money to a third party. I wanted to retrieve as much of this as possible. When she asked me what my terms were I replied with a figure far higher than I would normally have charged.  However, this heritage consultant  left me in no doubt that she had already decided in advance the amount I was to be paid, which was far less than I had demanded and indeed less than the work demanded. In effect I was to be paid less than she received for a half day in return for a several weeks’ work.  I provided her with work of both a quality and quantity equal to the peanuts  she was willing to pay me.

I have often had aspirations to be a consultant myself. After all, I do know a thing or two about a lot of things, and if I don’t know I generally can locate information. But that is to take a very idealistic notion of consulting. It’s not about buying in skills or experience: it’s about one great big merry-go-round, a gold-painted daisy-chain of patronage. It does indeed seem that it is about stealing people’s watches and then charging them for telling the time; in other words taking the information that already exists in an organisation and passing it off as new – and getting paid for it. But let’s ask who is ultimately being robbed here: in the public sector, whether county councils, health boards or parastatals it is public money that is being squandered, and the public are then frequently told that essential services cannot be delivered because of cut-backs.

Others who might aspire to become consultants must be aware that it is not as easy as simply calling yourself a consultant. For a start the tax people assume that you’re making oodles of cash, but you won’t unless you have the contacts to get the gigs. The best way of cementing contacts is to make sure you give a job to a son, daughter, brother, sister or fuck-buddy of a prominent politician or senior civil servant, preferably a minister. Once you get the gigs you don’t have to sing or play a note. You can, as the saying goes, “lie in bed all day.” No one will ask questions about your work’s quality, appropriateness or usefulness, and you can just keep sending off the bills. Neat.