Sweeping reforms in Ireland

SimpleSam06

I already posted this over in AH, but maybe thats not the right place to put it. How would you go about getting into power and what reforms would you like to see?

I think you'd first need a wide range of policies which would appeal to your target population, with enough appeal that it won't piss off business interests and those with a lot to lose from radical reforms.

Next you'd need to get your faces into the media, which is an expensive process. You'd either need independent financing or some sponsors with deep pockets, which again goes back to policies. And again, you need to have a support base before doing that, which is hard to get without media coverage, in a catch-22 situation.

Once you have policies, a party structure, a support base, and regular media coverage, you need to actually get into power. Actually on the whole, its not too hard a process. Find a sponsor or two, political and legal experts, a marketing team, and away you go. If it was up to me, I'd enact the following reforms:

• More stringent controls on the banking and financial sector to prevent them throwing money at people who really can't afford to pay it back.
  
• Anti property investment legislation, as was recommended in the Bacon report (actually implemented but cancelled due to a shortage of housing stock at the time).
  
• Much tighter control of the civil service, in particular the health service, with wide layoffs and pay freezes until they are on a par with the private sector, pension reform also.
  
• Sweeping reforms of the outdated armed forces in Ireland, with a focus on smaller, better trained and equipped groups, and a considerably enhanced naval and air profile. The days of the mass army are long gone, and if its not effective, remove it. Yes I know Aegis cruisers cost a fortune, but you only need to buy them once every 50 years.
  
• Enhanced support for entrepreneurs and small business people, with low interest loans and favourable grants for that purpose. And a branch of the government whose sole purpose it is to help them market and sell their product internationally and nationally.
  
• Much higher government investment in local industry and technology - open an Irish built car manufacturing plant for example, or make boats our speciality, this is an island after all. There are also exciting things being done in the field of renewable resources and biotech, automation, the list is endless. This is also where you can put your recently fired/retired civil servants.
  
• Reforms of the police and prison systems, making them better equipped but fewer in numbers, and a real alternative to the failed prison system we have currently in place, focused on proper rehabilitation.
  
• A review and reform of border controls and immigration.
  
• A foreign policy focused on trade and the exchange of raw materials and ideas with other nations, in particular poorer countries (a la what China is doing right now), leveraging our favourable position within the EU, which offers free access to a market of a half a billion people. As it is most of our foreign policy is flogging faith-n-begorrah.
  
• A minimal taxation policy.
  
• Loosened local intellectual property laws, which have historically lead to massive advancements in technology whenever it occurred (see again China and in fact the US around the turn of the last century).
  
• Reforms of the agricultural sector, focusing on better returns for the effort put in, and specialised food crops.
  
• Complete educational reforms, and a much larger investment into the educational system. I don't mean by this more pay for teachers, I mean more teachers, more schools, and the latest cutting edge equipment in schools and universities.
  
• Strong anti corruption legislation, mandatory end to end financial transparency for all public servants above a certain level, and using the new ubiquity of the internet to allow the general population to have more of a say in local government.
• Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
• Much development on the process of teaching the Irish language, and the focus on Irish culture in general. Particular emphasis would be placed on the works of people like Jim Fitzpatrick.
• Support for the concept of a united Ireland, but passive support only. If the people of the north vote to rejoin the south, they are more than welcome.

Now thats an Ireland I'd like to live in.

djpbarry

While I would largely agree with the policies you have laid out here, I have one or two questions:

1. What would the review and reform of immigration involve?
2. And the reforms of the armed forces?
3. A minimal taxation policy? Surely that would do more harm than good? Especially in conjunction with investment in infrastructure?
4. "Development on the process of teaching the Irish language"; is this not a bit out-dated?

SimpleSam06

djpbarry wrote:

What would the review and reform of immigration involve?

Well look at what we have now; rising dissatisfaction among the populace with the state of immigration. The immigration laws and procedures need to be reformed to deal with that.

djpbarry wrote:

And the reforms of the armed forces?

Basically we don't need an army, and the army we have is useless for the purposes of defence, with outdated equipment. What we need is a smaller, more mobile force, able to deal with serious issues and terrorism as it arises. National defence should fall far more into the Navy and Air Force.

djpbarry wrote:

A minimal taxation policy? Surely that would do more harm than good? Especially in conjunction with investment in infrastructure?

No, if you strip off even a small amount of the civil service, and restrain the rest (discard that benchmarking for example), you have freed up enormous amounts of money that can be used elsewhere. Putting the civil servants into profitable companies increases that benefit. Don't forget, you have 20% of the working population in the civil service, all with gold plated pensions. That is not sustainable.

djpbarry wrote:

"Development on the process of teaching the Irish language"; is this not a bit out-dated?

That is exactly the problem. Irish as it is being taught in schools at the moment is a disaster. If we wish to maintain our national language, we need to reform that process completely.

djpbarry

SimpleSam06 wrote:

The immigration laws and procedures need to be reformed to deal with that.

Meaning what exactly?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

What we need is a smaller, more mobile force, able to deal with serious issues and terrorism as it arises.

Well, I would say the priority should be narcotics squads rather than anti-terrorism.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Irish as it is being taught in schools at the moment is a disaster. If we wish to maintain our national language, we need to reform that process completely.

What I meant is that the Irish language as a priority in education is a bit of an out-dated notion.

SimpleSam06

djpbarry wrote:

Meaning what exactly?

Tightened, basically.

djpbarry wrote:

Well, I would say the priority should be narcotics squads rather than anti-terrorism.

The armed forces are not and never have been an adequate replacement for the Gardai, they are two different sections.

djpbarry wrote:

What I meant is that the Irish language as a priority in education is a bit of an out-dated notion.

You're entitled to your opinion, but my feelings, and probably those of a lot of Irish people, are that it would be advantageous to us to see the language restored to its proper place as the national language. It is very much part of Irish culture and identity.

r3nu4l

I agree with what you are saying about the Irish language.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

[*]Anti property investment legislation, as was recommended in the Bacon report (actually implemented but cancelled due to a shortage of housing stock at the time).

The problem with stock shortages is that builders realised that investors weren't buying anymore so cut down on the amount they were building. Investors fuelled the building boom in the first place unfortunately. That whole situation is a catch-22.

If you bring forth anti property investment legislation then you'd better have policies in place to encourage builders to build! Remember that if they aren't building in Ireland...they are probably still building in another country and may move their base of operations to that country...probably the UK!

cavedave

Reforms of the police and prison systems, making them better equipped but fewer in numbers, and a real alternative to the failed prison system we have currently in place, focused on proper rehabilitation.

I believe half the criminals should not be in jail.
Non payment of fines or buying of licences should probably be dealt with with community service not jail.
Prostitution and drug use and other "crimes" that occur between consenting adults should not be crimes.
Certain very serious criminals should be given a survival course some tools dropped off on the Saltee islands and left to fend for themselves. That might seem harsh but spending 100 thousand a year on a murderer is an appalling waste.

djpbarry

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Tightened, basically.

Tightened, meaning, "stop letting so many people into the country"? Why?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

The armed forces are not and never have been an adequate replacement for the Gardai, they are two different sections.

I’m not disputing that. What I am saying is that if I were to rank threats to our security as I see them, I would rank drug smuggling a lot higher than terrorism, given the links to organised crime.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

it would be advantageous to us to see the language restored to its proper place as the national language. It is very much part of Irish culture and identity.

How would this be "advantageous"? The fact that it is part of our culture is not in dispute, but I would say the lack of school places in this country is a much greater concern to parents than the particulars of how Irish is taught.

purple'n'gold

Tightened, meaning, "stop letting so many people into the country"? Why?

No right minded person wants to stop letting people into the country, but we should have a zero tolerance towards illegal immigration. People from outside the EU landing here without proper documentation, should be held at point of entry and sent back to where they have just come from ASAP. Word would soon get around that we are not a soft touch anymore.

silverharp

SimpleSam06 wrote:

[*]Anti property investment legislation, as was recommended in the Bacon report (actually implemented but cancelled due to a shortage of housing stock at the time).

I think the planning process should be overhauled and building standards improved, otherwise let the market find a balance, we don't dictate how many shoes can be sold, why is property any different.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

[*]Much higher government investment in local industry and technology - open an Irish built car manufacturing plant for example, or make boats our speciality, this is an island after all. There are also exciting things being done in the field of renewable resources and biotech, automation, the list is endless. This is also where you can put your recently fired/retired civil servants.

I hope the car plant idea is a joke? however no reason why ireland should not be a centre of excellence in renewable energy

SimpleSam06

djpbarry wrote:

I’m not disputing that. What I am saying is that if I were to rank threats to our security as I see them, I would rank drug smuggling a lot higher than terrorism, given the links to organised crime.

To paraphrase "The Siege", the army is a broadsword, not a scalpel.

djpbarry wrote:

How would this be "advantageous"? The fact that it is part of our culture is not in dispute, but I would say the lack of school places in this country is a much greater concern to parents than the particulars of how Irish is taught.

There is no reason why both issues cannot be addressed simultaneously. I'd say they almost complement each other, in fact.

silverharp wrote:

I think the planning process should be overhauled and building standards improved, otherwise let the market find a balance, we don't dictate how many shoes can be sold, why is property any different.

I'm definetely with you on the planning process. Property is wildly different to shoes, not least because there isn't a limited stock of shoes, and the making of new shoes isn't a highly expensive and regulated industry accounting for a massive amount of the national tax returns. They do have one thing in common though. Everyone need shoes.

silverharp wrote:

I hope the car plant idea is a joke? however no reason why ireland should not be a centre of excellence in renewable energy

Why would the car plant idea be a joke? In fact we could mix it with that centre of excellence in renewable energy!

SimpleSam06

Del Griffith wrote:

If you bring forth anti property investment legislation then you'd better have policies in place to encourage builders to build!

In a situation where one house in six in the country is sitting empty, I don't think a great deal of new building will be required for a while. I mean, its not like one person in six is homeless.

cavedave wrote:

Certain very serious criminals should be given a survival course some tools dropped off on the Saltee islands and left to fend for themselves. That might seem harsh but spending 100 thousand a year on a murderer is an appalling waste.

Serious habitual criminals would be high on the list of things to do, without a doubt. Its a fine line to tread between treating them too well and descending into medieval punishment routines though.

djpbarry

purple’n&#8217 wrote: »

People from outside the EU landing here without proper documentation, should be held at point of entry and sent back to where they have just come from ASAP

That is immoral and, more importantly, illegal.

It is common for people seeking asylum to travel with false or no documentation. This is because they are frequently not in a position to seek the necessary documents from their own government or an embassy. Article 31 of the Refugee Convention [Geneva
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951] acknowledges this difficulty and obliges states not to impose penalties on asylum seekers who arrive illegally in their state.

Persons who are trafficked usually work illegally in exploitative circumstances such as in sex work. The majority of trafficked persons are women and children. Smuggled persons are generally smuggled for the purposes of (illegal) employment or to seek international protection. In the latter case, people resort to smugglers due to the difficulty of travelling in a regular manner to another country such as visa restrictions, or the difficulty of obtaining valid documentation in their own country.

The World Summit for Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995) called on States to ensure that migrant workers benefit from the protection they are afforded under international law, to ratify all relevant international instruments, and to take measures to ensure that migrant workers are not exploited. In addition, States were encouraged to combat illegal immigration and trafficking in persons while safeguarding the rights of undocumented migrants.

Several initiatives are under consideration and the Council of the European Union agreed a Directive in May 2001, on the mutual recognition of decisions in the expulsion of third-country nationals. The provisions of this Directive apply to Ireland and it refers to expulsions based on a threat to public order or national security and safety in cases where a third-country national is convicted in a Member State of a crime, punishable by a term of imprisonment of at least one year, or if there are serious grounds for believing that the person has committed a serious crime, or if a third-country national contravenes entry and residence rules.

In April 2002, the European Commission issued a Green Paper on a community return policy on illegal residents. The Commission has drawn up a proposal for a Council Framework Decision on combating trafficking in human beings. This deals with both trafficking in persons for the purposes of labour exploitation and sexual exploitation. The Commission Proposal recognised that trafficked persons are not voluntary illegal immigrants, but have been brought to the host State by a variety of means including, deception, coercion, threats, and abduction. Rather than being criminals, they are victims.

silverharp wrote:

no reason why ireland should not be a centre of excellence in renewable energy

Finally, someone agrees with me!!

cavedave

Serious habitual criminals would be high on the list of things to do, without a doubt. Its a fine line to tread between treating them too well and descending into medieval punishment routines though.

Yes my suggestion of banishment is a premedieval routine and certainly crosses that line. In its defense it is cheap, it is arguably more pleasant then being locked up. So the question is "is banishing someone from society who has significantly broken the social contract unreasonable?". Or at least more unreasonable then the millions of euro we currently spend on each of these people currently.

karen3212

Hi op,
I like your ideas. Irish could definately be thought in a better way.

I don't know what the army would be for, anit-terrorism is probably better tackled by police. As for fighting drugs, well then I would just leagalise them and spend the money spared on education about drugs, and rehabilitation of addicts.

Also, I thought better teacher training might be a good idea as it's more effective than smaller classese with more teachers. Yeah though we do need more schools near where people live.

djpbarry

cavedave wrote:

In its defense it is cheap, it is arguably more pleasant then being locked up. So the question is "is banishing someone from society who has significantly broken the social contract unreasonable?". Or at least more unreasonable then the millions of euro we currently spend on each of these people currently.

This was attempted in the past by the state of California. The island in question was Alcatraz.

bonkey

purplengold wrote:

No right minded person wants to stop letting people into the country, but we should have a zero tolerance towards illegal immigration.

But that only requires that we enforce the laws that we already have, not that we change the law.

Incidentally, it wouldn't solve the problems that you claim its targetting, given that the overwhelming majority of foreigners in Ireland are legal intra-EU migrants which nothing short of succession would allow us to do anything about.

People from outside the EU landing here without proper documentation, should be held at point of entry and sent back to where they have just come from ASAP. Word would soon get around that we are not a soft touch anymore.

You seem to be labouring under the impression that Ireland gets a disproportionately high number of asylum seekers (genuine or otherwise). Have you any figures to back this up?

The UNHCR numbers, incidentally, disagree with any such notion. We are not amongst the top recipients, and the numbers of applicants to Ireland are falling steadily.

cavedave

This was attempted in the past by the state of California. The island in question was Alcatraz.

Alcatraz was a prison. A cruel expensive prison. I am not suggesting a prison. I am suggesting banishment to an otherwise deserted island.

bonkey

Just on some of the other points...

SimpleSam06 wrote:

More stringent controls on the banking and financial sector to prevent them throwing money at people who really can't afford to pay it back.

Banks don't make money out of people who can't afford to pay them back. They do, however, make money from people who can just-about afford to pay them back.

That people are stupid enough to put themselves in such crippling amounts od debt is neither the banks' nor the governments' responsibility. Its not the solution to the problem I think you want to target, which is housing.

Enhanced support for entrepreneurs and small business people, with low interest loans and favourable grants for that purpose. And a branch of the government whose sole purpose it is to help them market and sell their product internationally and nationally.

Business is not the government's forte, nor should it be. Enhanced support for such generally means one of two things :

1) Easy-to-get monies from the state - seems attractive but overall isn't necessarily a good thing.
2) Reductions in worker-security - attractive for employers only.

Much higher government investment in local industry and technology

Again, not the government's forte. You want them to fix the civil service because they've basically turned it into a money-pit, but at the same time you're suggesting they can be trusted to dabble meaningfully in business.

A review and reform of border controls and immigration.

Schengen is already a reform. Beyond that and implementing the laws we already have in place, I'd like to hear what else you have in mind.

A minimal taxation policy.

Can you show how this will pay for things? If not, why not go the whole hog and suggest a no-taxation policy.

To be honest, I don't think the level of personal taxation is the problem. If you had a public transport and public health system to rival the Swiss, as well as a world-class road network maintained through your taxes, good state0run pensions and so on you'd be happy to pay what you're paying and possibly more.

Its value people want to see - knowledge that their taxes are actually being well spent.

[*]Loosened local intellectual property laws, which have historically lead to massive advancements in technology whenever it occurred (see again China and in fact the US around the turn of the last century).

It works for economic giants who can afford to piss off whoever it is that they're stealing IP from. For us, it would mean succession from the WTO, as well as pariah status from the US and possibly from the EU. It would also fly 100% in the face of your notion of trading ideas with other nations.

[*]Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.

You mean like they're doing? It takes time.

Support for the concept of a united Ireland, but passive support only.

Absolutely not. We dropped exactly that from our constitution as a part of what achieved the shaky peace that got us as far as we are today. Reintroducing it would be a disaster, whether as policy, encouragement, or anything else.

If the people of the north vote to rejoin the south, they are more than welcome.

No. If they vote to join the south, then the republic will also have to vote to let them.

bonkey

cavedave wrote:

I am suggesting banishment to an otherwise deserted island.

An island which will have to have its borders and airspace fully protected all the time, to make sure someone doesn't take a boat or helicopter and lift people away.

An island which will need to have all the necessary facilities and capabilities to be self-sustaining in terms of basic human amenities.

An island which, despite this, will have no imposed law, meaning that if it turns into a medieval "survival of the strongest" fiefdom for some tyrant prisoners, well...thats just fine.

Seriously...it sounds like a bad movie plot. In fact...I think this idea has appeared in more than one dodgy movie.

Hotblack Desiato

Sounds like a crackpot dictatorship to me.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

[*]Anti property investment legislation, as was recommended in the Bacon report (actually implemented but cancelled due to a shortage of housing stock at the time).

Not everyone can (or wants to) buy a home, without property investors tenants will be homeless.

[*]Much tighter control of the civil service, in particular the health service, with wide layoffs and pay freezes until they are on a par with the private sector, pension reform also.

Health service workers are not civil servants and many are on fixed-term contracts, etc.
Bring in layoffs if you like but the cost of redundancy will be huge and there are already staff shortages in many areas like healthcare (not admin) and immigration.
Sounds like a typical Indo rant.

[*]Sweeping reforms of the outdated armed forces in Ireland, with a focus on smaller, better trained and equipped groups

Already been happening for a long time (lots of barracks closures with money going instead into equipment.)

[*]Enhanced support for entrepreneurs and small business people, with low interest loans and favourable grants for that purpose. And a branch of the government whose sole purpose it is to help them market and sell their product internationally and nationally.

IDA?
Enterprise Ireland?
County enterprise boards?
Udaras?
Etc. etc. etc.

[*]Much higher government investment in local industry and technology - open an Irish built car manufacturing plant for example

Now that is quite simply a joke, at least I hope it is.

This is also where you can put your recently fired/retired civil servants.

Hmmm yes let's 'redelploy' a map draughtsman into a the Lada state car works, makes sense :rolleyes:

[*]Reforms of the police and prison systems, making them better equipped but fewer in numbers, and a real alternative to the failed prison system we have currently in place, focused on proper rehabilitation.

We already have insufficient places and short terms for violent offenders. Society needs protecting from these people.

[*]A foreign policy focused on trade and the exchange of raw materials and ideas with other nations, in particular poorer countries (a la what China is doing right now), leveraging our favourable position within the EU, which offers free access to a market of a half a billion people. As it is most of our foreign policy is flogging faith-n-begorrah.

This is just gobbledegook tbh.

[*]A minimal taxation policy.

Who's going to pay for the dole for all those sacked civil servants?

[*]Loosened local intellectual property laws, which have historically lead to massive advancements in technology whenever it occurred (see again China and in fact the US around the turn of the last century).

In other words legalise ripping off IP from other countries? Interesting, the EU won't allow it though.

[*]Reforms of the agricultural sector, focusing on better returns for the effort put in, and specialised food crops.

What is a 'specialised food crop' ?

and the latest cutting edge equipment in schools and universities.

This is the sort of hogwash Microsoft and Dell peddle. We don't need one laptop per child, we need smaller class sizes and more effective targeting of early educational disadvantage.

mandatory end to end financial transparency for all public servants above a certain level

Already in place. Politicians are not public servants though, if that's who you meant.

and using the new ubiquity of the internet to allow the general population to have more of a say in local government.

Yeah, because e-voting is such a roaring success, we should have i-voting :rolleyes:

[*]Much development on the process of teaching the Irish language, and the focus on Irish culture in general. Particular emphasis would be placed on the works of people like Jim Fitzpatrick.

You can't force language and 'culture' (or rather, one's particular idea of what constitutes culture) down people's throats, I thought we'd have learned that after trying it for 80+ years.

cavedave

An island which will have to have its borders and airspace fully protected all the time, to make sure someone doesn't take a boat or helicopter and lift people away.

That is a good point and one that is serious enough to scupper the whole scheme.

An island which will need to have all the necessary facilities and capabilities to be self-sustaining in terms of basic human amenities.

Most islands would have this. As long as to describe basic as the standard of living of most humans in the world now and in the past. That may be too low to be acceptable to people.

An island which, despite this, will have no imposed law, meaning that if it turns into a medieval "survival of the strongest" fiefdom for some tyrant prisoners, well...thats just fine.

Most prisons appear to be like this at the moment.

silverharp

bonkey wrote:

Banks don't make money out of people who can't afford to pay them back. They do, however, make money from people who can just-about afford to pay them back.

That people are stupid enough to put themselves in such crippling amounts od debt is neither the banks' nor the governments' responsibility. Its not the solution to the problem I think you want to target, which is housing.

Banks do make money doing this, that is what the sub prime mess is about, they sold the loans on to stupid European banks


I normally go with the free market approach, in fact abolishing central banks would sort out a lot of finance issues around the world, but it is a simple fact that a significant portion of the population don’t understand the consequenses of being in debt. Had banks not been allowed issue 100% mortgages and increase the loan multiples and tolerate liar loans, the problem would not be as bad now. Cars have safety features attached, no reason why loan products should as well.

purple'n'gold

bonkey wrote:

But that only requires that we enforce the laws that we already have, not that we change the law.

Incidentally, it wouldn't solve the problems that you claim its targetting, given that the overwhelming majority of foreigners in Ireland are legal intra-EU migrants which nothing short of succession would allow us to do anything about.


You seem to be labouring under the impression that Ireland gets a disproportionately high number of asylum seekers (genuine or otherwise). Have you any figures to back this up?

The UNHCR numbers, incidentally, disagree with any such notion. We are not amongst the top recipients, and the numbers of applicants to Ireland are falling steadily.

I am not labouring under any impression. What I am saying quiet plainly is, if anyone who is not an EU citizen lands here without proper documentation they should be sent straight back to the country they just came from. It’s not a matter of how many of them there are, whether it is 100 people or 10,000.

djpbarry

purplengold wrote:

What I am saying quiet plainly is, if anyone who is not an EU citizen lands here without proper documentation they should be sent straight back to the country they just came from. It’s not a matter of how many of them there are, whether it is 100 people or 10,000.

I have already pointed out why this should not, and cannot, be done.

SimpleSam06

karen3212 wrote:

I don't know what the army would be for, anit-terrorism is probably better tackled by police. As for fighting drugs, well then I would just leagalise them and spend the money spared on education about drugs, and rehabilitation of addicts.

Well the army in its current form is an expensive boondoggle. If we reduce the numbers and improve the equipment and training, we will cover all eventualities not covered by the regular law enforcement groups.

karen3212 wrote:

Also, I thought better teacher training might be a good idea as it's more effective than smaller classese with more teachers. Yeah though we do need more schools near where people live.

Definetely a good idea.

bonkey wrote:

Banks don't make money out of people who can't afford to pay them back. They do, however, make money from people who can just-about afford to pay them back.

That people are stupid enough to put themselves in such crippling amounts od debt is neither the banks' nor the governments' responsibility. Its not the solution to the problem I think you want to target, which is housing.

Actually you are mistaken there. Banks will lend out money to people that might not be able to pay it back. The recent advent of a practise known as "securitisation" means they can package up mortgages and sell them on as securities, essentially removing any liablility to themselves. As to those unfortunate enough to have bought the marketing, you have to remember that was and is one hell of a marketing machine, whose sole purpose was to sell houses. In the absence of any alternative information, why would people do otherwise?

bonkey wrote:

Business is not the government's forte, nor should it be. Enhanced support for such generally means one of two things :

1) Easy-to-get monies from the state - seems attractive but overall isn't necessarily a good thing.
2) Reductions in worker-security - attractive for employers only.

Eh, can you expand on point one, and explain point two. How does state assistance for entrepreneurship reduce worker security?

bonkey wrote:

Again, not the government's forte. You want them to fix the civil service because they've basically turned it into a money-pit, but at the same time you're suggesting they can be trusted to dabble meaningfully in business.

Well yes, the civil service is, as you said, a money pit. Cash goes in and never comes out. Business on the other hand needs to produce a profit, you can see pretty quickly if its working or not. Besides I'm not talking about state direction, I'm talking about state assistance, more of a middle man role.

bonkey wrote:

Can you show how this will pay for things? If not, why not go the whole hog and suggest a no-taxation policy.

...

Its value people want to see - knowledge that their taxes are actually being well spent.

Well when I said minimal taxation, I mean just sufficient to cover all of the reforms I mentioned, and keep the machine ticking over. This could easily be saved, as I mentioned before, by paring down the civil service.

If you can give people value for money along with minimal taxation, so much the better!

bonkey wrote:

It works for economic giants who can afford to piss off whoever it is that they're stealing IP from. For us, it would mean succession from the WTO, as well as pariah status from the US and possibly from the EU. It would also fly 100% in the face of your notion of trading ideas with other nations.

Only certain nations. I agree that the fallout would be tricky, but an analysis would have to be done to see whether the benefits would outweigh the problems. I don't know if you've ever heard of a data haven, but its another possible idea which could be applied in this instance.

bonkey wrote:

You mean like they're doing? It takes time.

Nah, sorry, government investment in infrastructure has been incredibly poor. Most of the work you see being done is being done with EU structural funds. If you want to see the current government in action, look at Galway's water supply, and try to get broadband internet access outside a major municipal centre.

bonkey wrote:

Absolutely not. We dropped exactly that from our constitution as a part of what achieved the shaky peace that got us as far as we are today. Reintroducing it would be a disaster, whether as policy, encouragement, or anything else.

I can definetely see where you are coming from with this. However this policy would seem to be implicit in most of our dealings with the north in any case. No need to make it explicit, just continue as we are.

SimpleSam06

ninja900 wrote:

Sounds like a crackpot dictatorship to me.

Just call me Hank Scorpio.

ninja900 wrote:

Not everyone can (or wants to) buy a home, without property investors tenants will be homeless.

Wrong, without Buy to Let investors, tenants will be homeless. Flippers and investors depending on capital appreciation produce nothing except higher house prices.

ninja900 wrote:

Health service workers are not civil servants and many are on fixed-term contracts, etc.
Bring in layoffs if you like but the cost of redundancy will be huge and there are already staff shortages in many areas like healthcare (not admin) and immigration.

I would classify them as employees of the state. As for shortages and redundancies, well we fixed that problem before, didn't we? I seem to recall an influx of south east asian and Indian nurses and doctors when that problem reared its ugly head in the past.

ninja900 wrote:

Sounds like a typical Indo rant.

You wouldn't happen to be a civil servant would you?

ninja900 wrote:

Already been happening for a long time (lots of barracks closures with money going instead into equipment.)

Random reductions are no good. A systematic deconstruction and rebuilding from the ground up are required to meet modern defence goals for Ireland.

ninja900 wrote:

IDA?
Enterprise Ireland?
County enterprise boards?
Udaras?
Etc. etc. etc.

I take it you have had no dealings with these bodies then. I have dealt with most of them, and believe me almost anything is better. I'll give you an example. One of my companies applied for a grant from the County Enterprise board, an equipment grant. It was processed and accepted, after six months of callbacks. Then we discovered we had to supply the funds for the equipment ourselves, and upon production of the receipts we received half of the portion of the equipment costs covered by the grant, excluding VAT.

Needless to say it was not a VAT registered company. To top it all off, a healthy portion of the grant money had to be repaid within a year. If you call that assistance, I hope you never have to assist anyone.

ninja900 wrote:

Now that is quite simply a joke, at least I hope it is.

Whats funny about an Irish manufactured car? Many European countries have their own brand of car.

ninja900 wrote:

Hmmm yes let's 'redelploy' a map draughtsman into a the Lada state car works, makes sense :rolleyes:

Its a good deal better than leaving the lot of them sitting like a millstone around the country's neck. We don't need one civil servant for every four other workers in the country, nowhere near it. This part of the policy would be the most difficult to implement, I'll grant you, but if Thatcher could stare down the civil service in the UK, it can be done elsewhere.

ninja900 wrote:

We already have insufficient places and short terms for violent offenders. Society needs protecting from these people.

Without a doubt. Its also just as certain that the current justice and prison system are outright failing, not just in terms of places available in prison, but in the whole prison system. A new route needs to be found to prevent recidivism.

ninja900 wrote:

This is just gobbledegook tbh.

Would you like me to use smaller words for you?

ninja900 wrote:

Who's going to pay for the dole for all those sacked civil servants?

On a very crude level, where we seem to be operating here, dole for civil servants is a good lot cheaper than salaries and pensions for civil servants. But that wasn't the point, was it.

ninja900 wrote:

In other words legalise ripping off IP from other countries? Interesting, the EU won't allow it though.

We managed a lower corporate tax rate than the rest of the EU, we can pull something off on this front too!

ninja900 wrote:

What is a 'specialised food crop' ?

More profitable crops than basic foodstuffs. Higher end stuff.

ninja900 wrote:

This is the sort of hogwash Microsoft and Dell peddle. We don't need one laptop per child, we need smaller class sizes and more effective targeting of early educational disadvantage.

Actually I mentioned building more schools earlier.

ninja900 wrote:

Already in place. Politicians are not public servants though, if that's who you meant.

Not to the extent that it should be. What were the reported contributions for Fianna Fail this year, if anyone can remember?

ninja900 wrote:

Yeah, because e-voting is such a roaring success, we should have i-voting :rolleyes:

I never said voting, merely greater transparency, discussion, and feedback. Make the minutes of council meetings open to the public - having sat in on one or two such meetings myself, I can tell you it would be an eye opener!

ninja900 wrote:

You can't force language and 'culture' (or rather, one's particular idea of what constitutes culture) down people's throats, I thought we'd have learned that after trying it for 80+ years.

Well given the way that Irish is generally taught in schools, I can't blame you for having a jaded opinion of it. The goal here would be to rejuvinate that process, and make it more intelligent, rather than the backwards method we have at the moment. I had one teacher spend half a class insisting to me that the word "sacsanaigh" (english) should be pronounced "sassana", even though the spelling of the word was clearly "sack-sa-nee" (saxons).

eoin5

Hey SimpleSam, would you do anything about the infection of Starbucks esque franchises killing local businesses? Would you do anything about our reliance on big foreign corporations like Intel and Guinness. I'm with you on the car factory, bring back the delorians

SimpleSam06

eoin5 wrote:

Hey SimpleSam, would you do anything about the infection of Starbucks esque franchises killing local businesses? Would you do anything about our reliance on big foreign corporations like Intel and Guinness. I'm with you on the car factory, bring back the delorians

Well on the one hand, you have people complaining they can't get KFC or Burger King in their home town, and on the other hand they are crying about the loss of uniqueness. I'd be well in support of setting up local competitors to those businesses though. Dunnes is the biggest threat to local flavour I can see, tbh.

As for the reliance on foreign business, thats what the whole "support for entrepreneurship" was about.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

No, if you strip off even a small amount of the civil service, and restrain the rest (discard that benchmarking for example), you have freed up enormous amounts of money that can be used elsewhere. Putting the civil servants into profitable companies increases that benefit. Don't forget, you have 20% of the working population in the civil service, all with gold plated pensions. That is not sustainable.

The number of Civil Servants is about 27,000. That's not 20% of the working population.

How would you select who to fire? The ones with the best chance of getting a private sector job? What happens if it means closing a government office in a politically sensitive constituency?

I can see a committee being formed already.

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

The number of Civil Servants is about 27,000. That's not 20% of the working population.

Okay, I'm using the term "civil service" maybe a bit too generally here. Lets say, anyone that gets paid from the money the Revenue Commissioners collect.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

How would you select who to fire? The ones with the best chance of getting a private sector job? What happens if it means closing a government office in a politically sensitive constituency?

I can see a committee being formed already.

Close it, hang the consequences. I wouldn't be a career politician, my interests are what is best for this country, in the medium to long term. What we have at the moment is not it, nor anywhere close. And anyway, if you're worried about people's noses getting bent out of shape, imagine the backlash from the nurses and teachers when benchmarking is discarded and pay is frozen, with a complete pension review.

As to who gets fired, lets start with the €250,000 a year consultants, and work our way down the food chain, shall we?

purple'n'gold

"Its a good deal better than leaving the lot of them sitting like a millstone around the country's neck. We don't need one civil servant for every four other workers in the country, nowhere near it. This part of the policy would be the most difficult to implement, I'll grant you, but if Thatcher could stare down the civil service in the UK, it can be done elsewhere".

Good ol' benchmarking Bertie stare down the civil servants? I take it you have a sense of humour!
We in the private sector should be delighted that we pay tax and FULL prsi to keep the civil servants in their featherbeded benchmarked jobs,and goldplated pensions. See I also have a sense of humour!

SimpleSam06

purplengold wrote:

Good ol' benchmarking Bertie stare down the civil servants? I take it you have a sense of humour!
We in the private sector should be delighted that we pay tax and FULL prsi to keep the civil servants in their featherbeded benchmarked jobs,and goldplated pensions. See I also have a sense of humour!

I have even less faith in Honest Ahern, the Builders' Buddy, than yourself. One of the main points of the thread was how one would go about forming a new political party here in Ireland, and how you would go about mustering popular support for such an effort. This party would then go about enacting the neccessary reforms. The time isn't ripe for it just yet, but in the coming economic troubles there might be an opportunity for those with the wits to spot the chance and the will to see it through.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Okay, I'm using the term "civil service" maybe a bit too generally here. Lets say, anyone that gets paid from the money the Revenue Commissioners collect....As to who gets fired, lets start with the €250,000 a year consultants, and work our way down the food chain, shall we?

So that would include people on the dole, nurses, civil servants, teachers, Gardai, firemen, TDs, senators, health inspectors, people on disability allowance, social welfare pensioners and private sector consultants paid by the government?

Will you fire people based on how much they get paid or based on their effectiveness? How do you propose to measure that?

Some kind of 'benchmarking'?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

So that would include people on the dole, nurses, civil servants, teachers, Gardai, firemen, TDs, senators, health inspectors, people on disability allowance, social welfare pensioners and private sector consultants paid by the government?

I'm not referring to people on the dole, on disability allowance, or social welfare pensioners, as should be abundantly clear from reading the thread. I'm talking about public sector employees, which does include all of those other categories you mentioned.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Will you fire people based on how much they get paid or based on their effectiveness? How do you propose to measure that?

Well for a start, public sector wages have been increasing a great deal faster than their private sector counterparts. This is based on the "benchmarking" process, which is largely rooted in the mistaken observation by public sector employees that everyone was getting rich in the dot com boom, while they were slaving away on a pittance with no real prospects of improvement. I've actually encountered nurses and teachers who have said exactly that to me.

Its no good pointing out to them that a market which willingly paid well for services, and holding the country to ransom for a very unreasonable pay raise are two very different things.

Furthermore, a recent report suggested that private sector employees would need to save twenty eight percent of their pay for forty years in order to be able to afford a pension similar to that received in the public sector.

So, the upshot would need to be a salary review, hours worked review, and pension reform, as well as a "requirements" review, to see who we really need in the grand apparatus of government, and who is just dead wood or middle management. Performance reviews (not the load of bollocks currently in place, before anyone mentions it) would need to be in place as well, and the day of the public employee who cannot be fired needs to come to an end.

A great deal of the day to day working of the government could be easily automated as well, doing away with many paper pushers. I've no doubt everyone has a story to tell, yes they are vital to the well being of the state, and so on; I don't care. By leveraging technology and modern methods of organisation in every section of goverment, further reductions in required employees can be made.

There are a lot of other issues I'd like to see addressed as well, such as that there are very few places for people to socialise except bars and nightclubs in Ireland. You can lay the blame for a lot of the stress on the police force and emergency services at that door as well, never mind the knock on effects to the economy.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So, the upshot would need to be a salary review, hours worked review, and pension reform, as well as a "requirements" review, to see who we really need in the grand apparatus of government, and who is just dead wood or middle management. Performance reviews (not the load of bollocks currently in place, before anyone mentions it) would need to be in place as well, and the day of the public employee who cannot be fired needs to come to an end.

I thought I read somewhere that public servants could be fired?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

By leveraging technology and modern methods of organisation in every section of goverment, further reductions in required employees can be made.

OK, You've fired all the senior managers and you're against hiring expensive consultants. Who will do the review and how much will you pay them? Also, who will do the leveraging/automation/IT thingy? How much will that cost and who will you hire to do that: PWC?

What if it transpires that offices outside of Dublin will have to close and the current government is faced with a back-bench revolt?

SimpleSam06

And just a quick link to information about that report, some of which I quote here:

A private sector worker can provide for the equivalent of a public service pension for a maximum of two-thirds of final salary for retirement. However, 28% of salary would have to be put aside every year for 40 years to do so. Not many people can afford to save this amount.

This figure is based on an assumption that a person's salary increases by 5% per annum; annual investment growth is 7% and annuity rates (which buy a pension on retirement) are 4%.

The solution that is available to the small few who get top positions in the private is to have their company agree to set aside large amounts in a pension fund as funding of 28% for four decades is only something a public servant could dream of, without worrying about who was doing the paying.

Even where the private sector pensioner ends on the same salary as a public sector counterpart, the latter will continue to be a winner.

Public Sector and Private Sector Earnings

Last Thursday, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) announced that average industrial hourly pay increased by 2.1% in 2005 compared with a rise in the Consumer price index of 2.5%. Being an average means that some workers got less than a 2% increase.

The average hourly wage in the Manufacture of food products sector was €13.09 in December and was highest at €28.74 in the Electricity, gas, steam and hot water supply sector that is dominated by two State companies.

Average weekly earnings of All Employees (Industrial, Clerical and Managerial) rose by 3.4% in the year to December 2005. This rise consists of increases of 3.1% for Industrial Employees and 3.7% for Clerical and Managerial employees combined.

On February 1st, the CSO reported that average weekly earnings in the Public Sector (excluding Health) rose by 5.7% in the year to September 2005. The index of average earnings, which excludes some effects of changes in employment composition, rose by 5.7% for the same period.

The average weekly earnings for the total public sector (ex Health) was €848.87 - €44,000 annually. The average in the Semi-State sector was €901.53.

The average weekly earnings for all employees in the Industrial Sector including Managerial staff in December, was €693.95 - €36,000 annually.

In December 2000, a Public Service Benchmarking Body, established under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF), was asked to undertake a fundamental examination of the pay of public service employees vis-a-vis the private sector. Former Davy Stockbrokers' economist Jim O'Leary was a member of the body for a period but he resigned before it reported.

In 2004, O'Leary who had joined the Department of Economics at Maynooth University, published with two of his colleagues, the results of six months' rigorous and painstaking research into public-private sector pay differentials in Ireland - Public-Private Wage Differentials in Ireland, G.Boyle, R.McElligott and J.O'Leary, ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2004.

O'Leary and his colleagues wanted to discover whether similar people in similar employment circumstances were better or worse off working in the public than in the private sector. In order to do this, they had to control for attributes like age, experience, gender and education, and also for job characteristics like occupation, type of contract and size of establishment.

As the CSO data does not permit this kind of analysis, the dataset that they had to use is one based on a large-scale survey conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and used for much of its research into poverty and inequality.

The core finding was that on average, public servants earned 13 per cent more than their private sector counterparts on a like-for-like basis in 2001. The researchers also discovered that the size of this margin (the public sector premium) in 2001 was not significantly different from what it had been in 1994, suggesting that pay increases in the public sector had kept pace with the private sector throughout the Celtic Tiger period.

Another discovery was that the margin by which public service workers outearned their private sector counterparts tended to be significantly larger at the bottom of the income distribution than at the top.

A particularly striking finding was that the estimate of the public sector premium for Ireland was more than twice as large as the available estimates for other countries.

The Public Sector Benchmarking Body recommended pay increases which averaged 9 per cent across the grades examined and cost €1.2 billion a year. Government Departments introduced aspirational targets for staff that would make a laughing stock of a manager in the private sector who emulated the farcical exercise.

O'Leary says that the Public Sector Benchmarking Body never published its research results and at no stage in its 278-page report did it explicitly state or opine that public sector pay had fallen behind that in the private sector.

Last November, Davy Stockbrokers said that Irish public sector pay is on average around 120 percent of private sector earnings, having risen from 113 percent in the past five years.

In a weekly market comment, Davy said that figures from the CSO (Central Statistics Office) indicated that average earnings in the public sector are now more than €43,000 a year. This compares with €33,500 in the private sector (industrial, construction, distribution and other sectors).

"Moreover, these crude comparisons take no account of the superior pension entitlements available to the public sector," Chief Economist Robbie Kelleher said.

The benchmarking awards have widened the gap significantly even though these were supposed to help the public sector catch up.

There are no performance targets and there are jobs for life.

On Thursday last, the trade union representing lower-paid civil servants warned the Government it will launch a number of equal pay claims which could cost the State up to €300m in back-pay.

The CPSU aims to close the gender pay gap in the civil service.

The union says the first case will centre on clerical workers earning €10,000 less than prison officers for doing the same work.

General Secretary of the CPSU Blair Horan sad that he is confident they will succeed, especially on the back of the recent Garda equal pay case, saying: “We’re now going to extend that claim, throughout the civil service and other government departments and we believe we’ve a good chance of success.”

He may well be right, given that it's easy for politicians to disburse money that's not theirs.

The politicians got their cut of the benchmarking bonanza and it was a confirmation of a reality in Ireland that those who can grab hold of the public megaphone, can generally get their way, whatever the facts and reality.

© Copyright 2007 by Finfacts.com

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I thought I read somewhere that public servants could be fired?

You read wrong, except under exceptional circumstances.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

OK, You've fired all the senior managers and you're against hiring expensive consultants. Who will do the review and how much will you pay them? Also, who will do the leveraging/automation/IT thingy? How much will that cost and who will you hire to do that: PWC?

What would be needed there would be an auditing group, third party and external. Many such exist to help businesses streamline their operations. The government cannot and should not be run like a business, but you specify that in the criteria for the auditing group.

Note that I never said I would fire all the senior managers, and yes I am against hiring expensive consultants. There is a large pool of national and international groups who would be delighted to take on a task like the automation and modernisation of the apparatus of a government, under strict supervision and deadlines, with inbuilt redundancy measures, to prevent the projects becoming a feeding trough.

As to how much it would cost, the better question to ask would be, how much will it save.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

What if it transpires that offices outside of Dublin will have to close and the current government is faced with a back-bench revolt?

The idea was never to reduce the effectiveness of government, but rather to make it more efficient and less of a weight on the nation as a whole. In any case, I'm not sure where you are getting this "widespread closure of offices and reduction of services" idea. Offices which close would need to be replaced by a similar or better service.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You read wrong, except under exceptional circumstances.

Same as in private sector then?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

The government cannot and should not be run like a business, but you specify that in the criteria for the auditing group.

Isn't that a license to keep people on for purely political reasons (e.g. unnecessary staff in a town located in a marginal constituency?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

and yes I am against hiring expensive consultants. ....There is a large pool of national and international groups who would be delighted to take on a task like the automation and modernisation of the apparatus of a government,

Name some. Give examples of past successes. Also some IT companies that would do the leveraging automation thingy you're so keen on. There's a few that have tried this in the UK I think?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

As to how much it would cost, the better question to ask would be, how much will it save.

Indeed, will we know this before or after the money has been spent?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

widespread closure of offices and reduction of services" idea. Offices which close would need to be replaced by a similar or better service.

Who said 'widespread"? The question is are you naive or do you accept that the government might not accept the outcome?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Same as in private sector then?

Hahah, you must be kidding. Seriously.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Isn't that a license to keep people on for purely political reasons (e.g. unnecessary staff in a town located in a marginal constituency?

Theres where your "third party" auditing group comes in. They aren't involved in the country, and when their job is done, they won't be back.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Name some. Give examples of past successes. Also some IT companies that would do the leveraging automation thingy you're so keen on. There's a few that have tried this in the UK I think?

So what your saying is that no large scale IT projects have ever been completed, and we should cast our hands to the sky and go back to the abacus and quill? Just because previous government efforts here and in the Uk have been disgraceful disasters, doesn't mean that will hold true for all such projects, forever. The point of this thread is about change in the status quo.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Indeed, will we know this before or after the money has been spent?

That would be the point of the auditing group, wouldn't it?

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Who said 'widespread"? The question is are you naive or do you accept that the government might not accept the outcome?

You seem to have real difficulty with the concept of the purpose of a government. Governments exist for the facility of the people, not the other way around. If the vast majority of people accept the need for these reforms, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Raskolnikov

The pensions of public sector workers definitely need to be reformed. It's a scandal in this day and age that they receive a full pension with zero contributions. The people who fund these pension, the private sector workers, very often don't get a single cent from their employers.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Hahah, you must be kidding. Seriously.

Seems like you're a bit short on details & are generalising quite a bit.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Theres where your "third party" auditing group comes in. They aren't involved in the country, and when their job is done, they won't be back.

So, give an example of such a group and tell\us about their past successes.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So what your saying is that no large scale IT projects have ever been completed, and we should cast our hands to the sky and go back to the abacus and quill? Just because previous government efforts here and in the Uk have been disgraceful disasters,

I'm glad you now recognise the risks although you seem ignorant of the role of the private-sector contractors in those failures. Some 80% of IT projects in the public and private sector fail

SimpleSam06 wrote:

That would be the point of the auditing group, wouldn't it?

What a wonderful idea. Who are these people exactly?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You seem to have real difficulty with the concept of the purpose of a government. Governments exist for the facility of the people, not the other way around. If the vast majority of people accept the need for these reforms, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Bless you, you must be new to politics. What happens when the consultants announce that the government offices, in, say, Coolock, Castlebarr Cahirciveen and Carrick on Shannon must close? What happens when the consultants tell the TDs to fire their political advisors?

I think you have great ideas but I seriously doubt if you really know how to make them work.

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Seems like you're a bit short on details & are generalising quite a bit.

In fairness, I could say the same thing about your responses on that issue. Having "read somewhere" that public sector employees could be fired easily isn't what I would call a credible rebuttal.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

So, give an example of such a group and tell\us about their past successes.

If I ever get as far as doing any of this, I'll be delighted to supply you and the rest of the country with that information. Theres no reason why a group could not be formed from scratch, in fact, if it came to it.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I'm glad you now recognise the risks although you seem ignorant of the role of the private-sector contractors in those failures. Some 80% of IT projects in the public and private sector fail

80%? Amazing, I'm surprised we ever got past the mastery of fire. Back up that, if you would be so good, a link would be nice. I'm very familiar with the role of private sector groups in these failures, and equally aware of the role that government mismanagement and pork politics played in these failures.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Bless you, you must be new to politics. What happens when the consultants announce that the government offices, in, say, Coolock, Castlebarr Cahirciveen and Carrick on Shannon must close? What happens when the consultants tell the TDs to fire their political advisors?

Probably the same thing that will happen when the junior ministers are told they can no longer receive salaries in excess of that of the German Chancellor. You are assuming that any of these reforms I am talking about here would take place in the current government. They would not. I am speaking about setting up a new party specifically to enact and oversee these reforms.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I think you have great ideas but I seriously doubt if you really know how to make them work.

No harm in grilling the ideas, in fact I'd be a lot more worried if no one said a word against them! While I may not have the nuts-and-bolts details of the reforms as yet, no one ever does at the start of projects. You start with an idea, then you flesh out the concept and make it workable.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

isn't what I would call a credible rebuttal.

The point is that you don't know what you're talking about. You confused public servants with civil servants and then you asserted that civil servants could not be fired when this is, in fact, untrue.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

If I ever get as far as doing any of this, I'll be delighted to supply you and the rest of the country with that information. Theres no reason why a group could not be formed from scratch, in fact, if it came to it.

Nobody is going to support you as you stand on such shaky ground. Back up your idea with examples of where your idea has already succeeded. BTW, why not call your group something like 'Progressive Democrats'?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

80%? Amazing,

Why are you amazed? It's the very first thing they tell trainees project managers. Try Here

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I'm surprised we ever got past the mastery of fire.

We did, but millions of people got killed in the process.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I'm very familiar with the role of private sector groups in these failures, and equally aware of the role that government mismanagement and pork politics played in these failures.

Then your naive optimism is very puzzling.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You start with an idea, then you flesh out the concept and make it workable.

Your idea is not original and we have not seen any meat, let alone living flesh, just a lot of wild ideas.

What we'll get will be just as useless as a 'shared bike/car cycle lane'. That sums up most public service projects

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

The point is that you don't know what you're talking about. You confused public servants with civil servants and then you asserted that civil servants could not be fired when this is, in fact, untrue.

Actually, first I used civil servant and public servant interchangeably, then I used "anyone paid by the revenue commissioners", and finally we have settled on "public sector employee". Now this doesn't seem to matter to anyone else except yourself, and it's been very clear from the get-go what and who I was talking about. Not to worry though, you can always "just read it somewhere in a book", right?

You wouldn't be the recipient of government funds yourself, by any chance?

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Nobody is going to support you as you stand on such shaky ground. Back up your idea with examples of where your idea has already succeeded. BTW, why not call your group something like 'Progressive Democrats'?

I have no need to back up something as basic as "auditing", especially not for the likes of yourself, who appears to be interested in circular arguments rather than actual progression.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Why are you amazed? It's the very first thing they tell trainees project managers. Try Here

And he links to a site trying to sell consulting services. What exactly do you think they are going to say, they are trying to sell services to you! Those figures basically say that IT projects which run into any difficulty at all are "failures". By those standards, 90% of civil engineering projects fail as well. Maybe we should stop building roads, and just make bicyles mandatory. Here comes the ambucycle...

The computer you are typing on is the result of a successful large scale IT project.

What most companies think of when they hear "government contract" is, woohoo, pork. Some sample steps just off the top of my head to combat this: structuring projects in such a way that a) multiple contractors are working on the same project (redundancy), b) only the successful ones will get paid enough to cover their expenses, c) introducing standard issue payment penalties for time or functionality overruns, and d) breaking monolithic projects into smaller modules with clear interoperability guidelines. And that is just off the top of my head.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

We did, but millions of people got killed in the process... Then your naive optimism is very puzzling... I have nothing really useful to add... Your idea is not original and we have not seen any meat, let alone living flesh, just a lot of wild ideas.

Okay you pedal your way back to the nineteenth century so, leave us to look after the future. Don't forget to leave your PC at the door! :rolleyes:

cyclopath2001 wrote:

What we'll get will be just as useless as a 'shared bike/car cycle lane'. That sums up most public service projects

This is like talking to a wall. Its not, run an audit and projects with the current government - it's "REPLACE THE GOVERNMENT" then make your changes to the structure. It bears repeating because you seem to have missed the point several times; it was actually the first section of the first post in this thread as well, now that I come to think of it.

Seriously, unless you have something new or unique to add to the conversation, I'm going to assume your muse has made off with your handlebar moustache, and you are in hot pursuit, so stop wasting my time with pointless circular arguments.

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

The point is that you don't know what you're talking about. You confused public servants with civil servants and then you asserted that civil servants could not be fired when this is, in fact, untrue.

And just to put this part of the discussion permanently to bed, heres the encyclopedia definition of a civil servant:

A civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public sector employee working for a government department or agency. The term explicitly excludes the armed services, although civilian officials will work at "Defence Ministry" headquarters.

You will note that I explicitly excluded the armed services in my OP.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

And he links to a site trying to sell consulting services.

They're fairly typical of the industry. The kind of people you may need to hire.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

The computer you are typing on is the result of a successful large scale IT project.

It's a Windows computer, mediocre, bloated, unreliable and over-priced. It's successful because it achieved a near-monopoly and customers have no real choice. Are you proposing this as model for Public Services?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Some sample steps just off the top of my head to combat this:

Indeed it is just 'off the top of your head'. It's not new. Who exactly manages the project? Public servants? Project management consultants? Shadowy international trouble-shooters?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Seriously, unless you have something new or unique to add to the conversation, ......

There's nothing new or unique in your proposals. It sounds very much like a discarded PD manifesto. Any circularity is in trying to lead you back and in holes in your unoriginal arguments.

Can you give an example of where a proposal such as yours has worked in the past, and tell us who the miraculous, inexpensive, non-consultant, auditors were?

Bottom line is this: How can you convince people that you could master the details needed to realise your ambitions for this country?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

They're fairly typical of the industry. The kind of people you may need to hire.

People quoting inaccurate or misleading statistics in order to scare up some business are not people I will ever hire.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

It's a Windows computer, mediocre, bloated, unreliable and over-priced. It's successful because it achieved a near-monopoly and customers have no real choice. Are you proposing this as model for Public Services?

Windows only makes the operating system. There is a great deal more in a computer than the OS. And even that does, at the end of the day, work. If this is the level of knowledge you posess about the industry, I see no point in discussing it with you.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Indeed it is just 'off the top of your head'.

Were these measures taken in all of these failed government IT projects you are so proud of?

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I think you have great ideas

cyclopath2001 wrote:

There's nothing new or unique in your proposals.

Hmmm.

And just on a point of interest, even if they are not new or unique (although I did come up with them myself), that does not make them wrong or unworkable.

Seriously though, your main objection seems to be that large technological projects always fail. With an attitude like that, no one would ever take advantage of new technology or advances. Proceeding with caution and analysis goes without saying, but luddites need not apply.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Bottom line is this: How can you convince people that you could master the details needed to realise your ambitions for this country?

To properly analyse and produce the information you are looking for would take months. I just opened a thread airing some ideas I had on boards. Discarding the whole thing because one poster on boards with shaky statistics and a poor grasp of project management thinks it wouldn't work would be a bit silly now, wouldn't it? As I said, if I ever make a serious effort at something like this, I'll be more than happy to supply you, personally, with more information than you can ever reasonably digest. Until such time, however, you'll have to make do with the ideas laid out here.

So let me ask you a question: what would you like to see being done with the country? I have little patience with hand-wringers and naysayers. Give me solid alternatives.

is_that_so

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I already posted this over in AH, but maybe thats not the right place to put it. How would you go about getting into power and what reforms would you like to see?

I think you'd first need a wide range of policies which would appeal to your target population, with enough appeal that it won't piss off business interests and those with a lot to lose from radical reforms.

Next you'd need to get your faces into the media, which is an expensive process. You'd either need independent financing or some sponsors with deep pockets, which again goes back to policies. And again, you need to have a support base before doing that, which is hard to get without media coverage, in a catch-22 situation.

Once you have policies, a party structure, a support base, and regular media coverage, you need to actually get into power. Actually on the whole, its not too hard a process. Find a sponsor or two, political and legal experts, a marketing team, and away you go. If it was up to me, I'd enact the following reforms:

• More stringent controls on the banking and financial sector to prevent them throwing money at people who really can't afford to pay it back.
  
• Anti property investment legislation, as was recommended in the Bacon report (actually implemented but cancelled due to a shortage of housing stock at the time).
  
• Much tighter control of the civil service, in particular the health service, with wide layoffs and pay freezes until they are on a par with the private sector, pension reform also.
  
• Sweeping reforms of the outdated armed forces in Ireland, with a focus on smaller, better trained and equipped groups, and a considerably enhanced naval and air profile. The days of the mass army are long gone, and if its not effective, remove it. Yes I know Aegis cruisers cost a fortune, but you only need to buy them once every 50 years.
  
• Enhanced support for entrepreneurs and small business people, with low interest loans and favourable grants for that purpose. And a branch of the government whose sole purpose it is to help them market and sell their product internationally and nationally.
  
• Much higher government investment in local industry and technology - open an Irish built car manufacturing plant for example, or make boats our speciality, this is an island after all. There are also exciting things being done in the field of renewable resources and biotech, automation, the list is endless. This is also where you can put your recently fired/retired civil servants.
  
• Reforms of the police and prison systems, making them better equipped but fewer in numbers, and a real alternative to the failed prison system we have currently in place, focused on proper rehabilitation.
  
• A review and reform of border controls and immigration.
  
• A foreign policy focused on trade and the exchange of raw materials and ideas with other nations, in particular poorer countries (a la what China is doing right now), leveraging our favourable position within the EU, which offers free access to a market of a half a billion people. As it is most of our foreign policy is flogging faith-n-begorrah.
  
• A minimal taxation policy.
  
• Loosened local intellectual property laws, which have historically lead to massive advancements in technology whenever it occurred (see again China and in fact the US around the turn of the last century).
  
• Reforms of the agricultural sector, focusing on better returns for the effort put in, and specialised food crops.
  
• Complete educational reforms, and a much larger investment into the educational system. I don't mean by this more pay for teachers, I mean more teachers, more schools, and the latest cutting edge equipment in schools and universities.
  
• Strong anti corruption legislation, mandatory end to end financial transparency for all public servants above a certain level, and using the new ubiquity of the internet to allow the general population to have more of a say in local government.
• Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
• Much development on the process of teaching the Irish language, and the focus on Irish culture in general. Particular emphasis would be placed on the works of people like Jim Fitzpatrick.
• Support for the concept of a united Ireland, but passive support only. If the people of the north vote to rejoin the south, they are more than welcome.

Now thats an Ireland I'd like to live in.

You may be doomed to failure on your quest as your policies have made scapegoats of a very large group of people which would include teachers, civil servants , health workers and their families. Why might they vote for unemployment?

I will say that although some of the ideas are interesting the timescale is likely to be 10-20 years and presumes that there is the political will to even bother.

Given our politics this will not happen. Sweeping reforms have a tendency to get swept under the carpet. I would also say that reforms that do not explain clearly why it is necessary to Joe Public can end up as an intellectual exercise.

That said some of it is eminently fixable.

I think though it is too narrowly focussed.

Where are the plans to deal with poverty and inequality?

Where is the pre-school education system?

Where are the proposals on joined up planning?

Much of what you propose is dependent on income and runs the risk of not being done properly if there is not enough income. This I see as the problem with very low taxation. Present levels IMO are close to where we could be, providing we have proper enforcement.

I think the starting point really should be who we are and what we want? Personally I am not in favour of yet another version of Ireland Inc. My own feeling is that we should have to pay for services but that those services must be as good as they can be.

Reforms for me would include

• Education , including pre-school
• Irish - Teaching it in a useful way
• Infrastructure to include education
• Public Transport
• Integration policies and legislation
• Equitable taxation and stringent enforcement
• Energy Policies
• Poverty Eradication
• Update "The Comely Maidens at the Crossroads" Speech - there must be a vision
• Planning, planning, planning to include massive fines and prison time for those attempting to subvert the process.
• Prison and Justice System, Gardai - Overhaul all of it
• Local Government Reform to include more power at local levels. Elected mayors is a good starting point.
• Good ethics legislation for all of those in office
• Health System - A hope that there must be a better way to run this
• Government/Public Service reform over a 10 year period, to include proper benchmarking but without the free cash.

SimpleSam06

is_that_so wrote:

You may be doomed to failure on your quest as your policies have made scapegoats of a very large group of people which would include teachers, civil servants , health workers and their families. Why might they vote for unemployment?

Yes, that part of it would be by far the most difficult to enact. The situation we have at the moment is untenable, however, so I don't see many alternatives. Unless we want to go back to the 80s again, which is possible. These policies would also upset those who own property and have a vested interest in maintaining high property prices.

Seeing something like this through would depend upon motivating the younger voters to join the voting, a difficult task but not impossible, with the right media message.

And they aren't scapegoats if they are really at fault.

is_that_so wrote:

I will say that although some of the ideas are interesting the timescale is likely to be 10-20 years and presumes that there is the political will to even bother.

I would hope for more like 5-10 years. As for the political will, nobody feels expecially like rocking the boat when the country is doing well, at least on paper. Many are predicting a serious economic downturn in the near future however, so there might be an opportunity then.

is_that_so wrote:

Given our politics this will not happen. Sweeping reforms have a tendency to get swept under the carpet. I would also say that reforms that do not explain clearly why it is necessary to Joe Public can end up as an intellectual exercise.

The idea would be to change the politics. I don't see any of these policies being too complex to fit into neat soundbites either.

is_that_so wrote:

Where are the plans to deal with poverty and inequality?

Dealing with poverty is linked to both domestic industrial investment and education, both of which are covered by the policies outlined. Obviously there are sociological elements that need to be dealt with as well, where an element of justice reform comes into play. Also I mentioned a lack of alternatives to getting banjoed in bars and clubs; that is relatively easy to fix. Also as far as I can tell, inequality is well on its way to being fixed as it is, although a review of the process might not hurt.

is_that_so wrote:

Where is the pre-school education system?

Funny you should mention that, actually, I was just pondering how best to deal with education. As it is you have a one-size-fits-all situation, which is barely adequate, with some segregation being done in secondary school, dividing students into higher and lower grades. We can surely do better than this.

One idea I was knocking around was a countrywide free or low cost wi-fi network (not that hard to do, in fact). The telcos would raise holy hell about interfering with their business, but in this day and age it's almost as neccessary as plumbing, in my opinion, so eminent domain them into the background (with the hint that they are lucky we don't look too closely at the rest of their operations).

You could put entire school and university curriculums online, with graded tests which visitors would need to pass before they got to the next level of the curriculum. Classes could be reduced in duration, covering the basic elements of education, while more advanced students could steam ahead at their own pace, with the assistance of a mentor or tutor (either online or in the classroom), gaining extra credits for their own work.

I am aware that there are lot of details that would need to be filled in there, (not everyone has a computer, for example) but it is the seed of something interesting.

is_that_so wrote:

Much of what you propose is dependent on income and runs the risk of not being done properly if there is not enough income. This I see as the problem with very low taxation. Present levels IMO are close to where we could be, providing we have proper enforcement.

We wouldn't really know how much taxation is the bare minimum until the entire apparatus is properly audited, I'd say.

is_that_so wrote:

My own feeling is that we should have to pay for services but that those services must be as good as they can be.

I'm in complete agreement with you here.

is_that_so wrote:

Integration policies and legislation

Yes, this is another vital area where the government has been ineffective.

is_that_so wrote:

Update "The Comely Maidens at the Crossroads" Speech - there must be a vision

There seems to be one emerging from this thread!

is_that_so wrote:

Government/Public Service reform over a 10 year period, to include proper benchmarking but without the free cash.

The only proper benchmarking at this stage would be reverse benchmarking.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

And even that does, at the end of the day, work.

The same could be said of the public services you criticise. next time choose a better example.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Were these measures taken in all of these failed government IT projects you are so proud of?

First, please quote where I indicated any 'pride' in any failed projects? Next, provide the examples you've been asked for repeatedly and failed to provide.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

your main objection seems to be that large technological projects always fail.

Where did I say that that? You're misquoting again.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

To properly analyse and produce the information you are looking for would take months. I just opened a thread airing some ideas I had on boards. Discarding the whole thing because one poster on boards with shaky statistics and a poor grasp of project management thinks it wouldn't work would be a bit silly now, wouldn't it?

Who said anything about discarding the whole thing? You're misquoting yet again. I support your ideas on efficiency. The question is whether or not anyone would trust in your ability to see them through. Where are your statistics and where are your examples of successful project management?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Until such time, however, you'll have to make do with the ideas laid out here.

They're lovely ideas, but they're not yours and unless you can tell people how you'd accomplish them, nobody is going to elect you to see them through. They'll probably vote PD instead.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So let me ask you a question: what would you like to see being done with the country?

On project management and efficiency, what you've proposed. But, see above.