The fate of the Great Southern Hotels (GSH) chain encapsulates everything that is bad in Irish policy-making. A once profitable company, which could have been sold successfully by the government in 1999, is now reduced to penury. It has lost money in ever-greater amounts for the past three years, is in danger of being shut down and needs a large injection of fresh capital if it has to have a future.

The employees, or at least a large proportion of them, could have had a secure future if Mary O’Rourke, as transport minister, had sold the hotels seven years ago. That she didn’t was not necessarily her fault: then, as now, a number of cabinet ministers were against the sale and the trade unions were as implacably opposed as now.

GSH cried out for clear thinking and decisive action. The state, which acquired the hotels because they were attached to railway companies, had no strategic interest in owning them. A sale was as simple as it was logical. In the late 1990s, the economy and the tourist industry were booming and the hotels could have been sold as viable going concerns.

Instead of clear thinking, we get parish pump politics. John O’Donoghue, now the minister for tourism and then minister for justice, opposes the sale because there’s a hotel in his constituency. Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, is always reluctant to contradict the wishes of the trade unions (and, surprise, surprise, there’s a hotel in his constituency too). The unions believe that politics is as much, if not more, their business as the welfare of their members. That means privatisations have to be opposed, even if they are in the best interest of the state and the workers.

And so the hotels atrophy. With great pride, the unions will boast about the high wages enjoyed by their members, even as the business that employs them creaks under the weight of the salary bill. The politicians who resist the sale speak of national institutions, yet ignore the fact that they are falling apart. Narrow political self-interest and wide political ambition have combined to bring the hotel group to its knees and the losers will be the taxpayers who foot the bill and the employees who lose their jobs.

That same combination of forces has delivered the chaos that passes for transport policy — and in particular aviation policy — under Ahern’s two administrations. O’Rourke was also on the verge of privatising Aer Lingus, yet seven years later it remains in state control. Aer Rianta, now dismembered into three airport authorities, was another candidate for sale. The outcomes have been dismal. Aer Lingus lost its senior executive team and its positive momentum because of Ahern’s indecisiveness. Dublin airport remains years away from having a second terminal. GSH, which is owned by the new Dublin Airport Authority, loses money. Cork airport is saddled with a new, vastly expensive terminal building that will weigh down the airport with so much debt it will struggle to stay competitive.

The hotels, however, suffered from more than inaction. As well as refusing to sell them at an advantageous time, Ahern’s government went out of its way to diminish their value by sanctioning tax breaks for new hotels, which have since mushroomed all over the country. Each new bed brought extra competition for GSH and each new sports complex and spa made the state-owned properties appear more old-fashioned and unattractive.

Now the taxpayer picks up the tab and the price is still mounting because the politicians have not yet finished with their idiocies.

O’Donoghue favours transferring the hotels into the ownership of Failte Ireland, so that the state can continue to swallow their losses, pay for their refurbishment and subsidise the most highly paid cadre of hotel workers in the country.

Others, including Ahern, will consider a sale, but only if so many conditions are attached that the group’s value plummets.

What private sector employer will want to inherit a workforce that soaks up almost half his turnover, and that adheres rigidly to demarcation lines determined by a trade union? It is hardly a shock to discover that GSH’s most profitable hotel is its newest — the Dublin airport hotel — and is also the one with the lowest number of Irish workers. The older hotels, which lose money, are staffed by a workforce that is predominantly Irish, unionised and overpaid — Siptu’s ideal workplace.

The longer the government dithers, the worse the trading situation at GSH will become. If Ahern cannot bring himself to agree a speedy sale, there is a real danger that the whole process will be overtaken by the election timetable, when all thoughts of privatisation will be put to one side.

The solution is as straightforward as it is unlikely to be pursued. A generous redundancy package should be put in place for all GSH employees and the properties should then be sold for as much as they can achieve, either individually or collectively. Whether they become vibrant hotels under new ownership, or are flattened to make way for blocks of apartments, or are transformed into nursing homes, should matter not one jot to the cabinet.

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