Winners and Losers under the departing government

Cavehill Red

Now they're gone, can we take a tally of who benefited under their rule and who lost out?
Let me begin with a few:

Winners:
Parliamentarians - wages went up ridiculously, and many, especially ministers, will be in receipt of massive pensions forever
Bankers - spunked billions on lost bets, had them bailed out by the taxpayer and yet none face prosecution
Private healthcare providers - Benefited from Harney's running down of the public system
The GAA who had much of Croke Park paid for by the taxpayer

Losers:
PAYE taxpayers who saw their taxes go through the roof
Children whose class sizes grew and school facilities became rundown
Sick people who languished on trolleys for days on end in hospitals that were understaffed and underfunded
Students who faced the cutting of their grants, the increase in fees and registration charges and who find it hard to gain accommodation due to rising rents

There's just a few. Any more winners and losers?

oppenheimer1

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Now they're gone, can we take a tally of who benefited under their rule and who lost out?
Let me begin with a few:

Winners:
Parliamentarians - wages went up ridiculously, and many, especially ministers, will be in receipt of massive pensions forever
Bankers - spunked billions on lost bets, had them bailed out by the taxpayer and yet none face prosecution
Private healthcare providers - Benefited from Harney's running down of the public system
The GAA who had much of Croke Park paid for by the taxpayer

Losers:
PAYE taxpayers who saw their taxes go through the roof
Children whose class sizes grew and school facilities became rundown
Sick people who languished on trolleys for days on end in hospitals that were understaffed and underfunded
Students who faced the cutting of their grants, the increase in fees and registration charges and who find it hard to gain accommodation due to rising rents

There's just a few. Any more winners and losers?

The GAA ... wtf? They got no more than any other sporting organisation, in addition Aviva is half paid for by the taxpayer too...

Cavehill Red

So add the FAI and IRFU to the list of winners if that's what you think.

Richard tea

Winners under FF government = Developers, builders, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, bankers

Losers under FF government = Developers, builders, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, bankers

Mr Trade In

Winner: Bertie, all his chums in the building trade/banking trade/brown envelope trade, all those nice Judges and all involved with the Mahon Tribunal who let him off scott free,all his former minions in Fianna Fail who are now stinking rich,the publicans in his local pubs.


Losers:Students,Disabled People,Sick people,General members of the public.

Tragedy

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Losers:
PAYE taxpayers who saw their taxes go through the roof

You mean a tax burden that was lowered year after year after year and has only been increased relatively recently, and today, is still lower than it used to be?
A tax burden that is commonly accepted by economists as being reduced by too much, and is a large reason why the government has such a large deficit?

Children whose class sizes grew and school facilities became rundown

You mean the children whose class sizes grew smaller and smaller for the vast majority of the time? And all the new schools and new facilities that were built?

Sick people who languished on trolleys for days on end in hospitals that were understaffed and underfunded

The hospitals that had funding increased year on year, and still haven't had many(if any) funding cuts? Most have funding freezes.

Students who faced the cutting of their grants, the increase in fees and registration charges and who find it hard to gain accommodation due to rising rents

The grant that also went up before finally being cut by around 8%(iirc)?
The grant that also had increased eligibility year on year? In 2003, your parents needed to be earning under €32,000 to qualify for 100% rate, in 2010 it was €41,110.
In 2010, 52% of all trinity students didn't pay registration fee.

Also, what planet are you living on claiming that rent is rising? The rest of your post is nonsense, sure, but that just boggles the mind,

There's just a few. Any more winners and losers?

Just a few what? Examples of how uninformed you are?
Yes, yes there is just a few.

MisterAnarchy

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Losers:
PAYE taxpayers who saw their taxes go through the roof
Children whose class sizes grew and school facilities became rundown
Sick people who languished on trolleys for days on end in hospitals that were understaffed and underfunded

Irish Paye workers currently pay one of the lowest rates of tax in the OECD.
Our taxes were ridiculously and artificially low between 2003-2008 .They are returning to normal levels now.

Ireland spends more money on health per head of population than every country in the Eu bar Cyprus.
Its not underfunded and not understaffed.Its the stark opposite.
Its completely and utterly mismanaged and badly run just like almost every other dept of the Govt.

juuge

The winners....Bertie - It looks as though the findings of the Mahon tribunal will never be published and the bankers, as the garda investigation will go on, and on and on............

Rosahane

On one of the radio programmes today, possibly Marion Finuchane, somebody commented that grassroots FF felt, that, for the past few years they were being ignored by the FF hierarchy.

So I suppose the:

Winners were the Developers and Bankers that FF either leglislated for or turned a blind eye to.

While the Losers were the traditional FF party member who mightn't have got that job, promotion, grant or sinecure they feel was their entitlement.

Dannyboy83

More than anything else, you can summarise the winner/loser results as follows:

Winner: Older generations
Loser: Future Generations
Colossal Loser: Current Younger generation

The older generations have cleaned up.
Many of them have sold houses at extortionate prices & they've benefited massively from the colossal wages of the Celtic Pyramid era while paying extremely low taxes.
The older generation in Ireland are the wealthiest this country has ever seen and will see for at least 3 generations to come.

The Future Generations are fairly screwed. They will more than likely have to emigrate to have a future.

The current younger generation has been screwed more than any other and this is why Fianna Fail has no hope in Ireland for the forseeable future.

You can split them into two groups.
The silver spoon and joe soap.
The silver spoon crew thought they had it made, many received deposits from parents to buy houses, borrowed colossal amounts of money from banks, now they are drowning in debt, their world is crashing down around them and they are prisoners on this island. Many of them have lost jobs and it's only time before they lose their houses. I believe there will be a large jump in the suicide rate in years to come.
The joe soap crew could never afford to buy a house (missed the boat), and now that houses prices are collasping, the bank won't lend them money to buy anything, so they are equally are screwed. They rent properties owned by the older generation, have sod all protection.

The current younger generation are facing an onslaught of taxation increases to pay for the hefty pensions and salaries of the people who benefited most from the boom, while state services are as bad as ever.
They will be screwed on everything from "community rating/risk equalization" in Health Insurance to subsidize the older generation, to climbing interest rates to whatever else.
That generation (of which I am a member) have been robbed blind from the FF government of the last 12 years.

I think the demographics will be very interesting to see in the future.
Of the class I graduated from, I can count on one hand the amount of people who have manged to buy houses, and they're now well and truely shafted. Not one of my friends has children despite many of them being married, because they cannot afford to and don't plan to have any for a long time to come.

I genuinely believe Ireland will be a case study in many classroom and many different disciplines in the coming years.
We only see the effects on the surface of what has happened in this country over the last decade now and we are only measuring it in economics, but it runs far, far deeper than just economics and it's going to extend much further into the future than what people seem to realize.

aftermn

When an economy collapses as ours has, there are no winners.
We all look at these things from our own perspective. I am of that older generation, but don't have investment properties. I know many who do, and understand why they went that direction. I am lucky in a different way. All my children are employed. I sympathise with young people, and their parents, who are not employed. Stigmas remain despite their irrelevance to current situations. Let it be the first concern of our new government, employment, employment employment. Without it we are lost, both socially and economically.

Sponge Bob

Losers

The Green special advisers, ministerial assistants and press hacks who have been ordered to surrender departmental laptops various papers and departmental phones tomorrow morning.

Their cheques are 'in the post'

the groutch

pensioners are the biggest winners imo, having money thrown at them in the good times, but when things go bad not a penny taken back, because that wouldnt be in the best interest of the party

Monty Burnz

Tragedy wrote: »

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Wow, reading that it sounds like Fianna Failure did a cracking job. I'll be sure to vote for them 1,2, and 3 in the order of my preference in my local constituency...

Tragedy, some what you are citing as good things (the slashing of the personal tax burden for example) is just an example of economic mismanagement - an unsustainable vote-buying giveaway that allowed the country to become overly dependent on a once-off bubble bonanza of property transaction taxes.

Similarly, you point to increased spending in the public sector - where are the corresponding improvements in public services? Or has all this money simply been squandered? (lower pupil-teacher ratios I will certainly acknowledge as a genuine improvement - sadly the ratios are rising again)

ISAW

Mr Trade In wrote: »

Winner: Bertie, all his chums in the building trade

the biggest economic sector losing jobs is the construction trade so that isn't true

/banking trade/

Bertie isn't on the board of any bank. Ironically Adams gave a lunchtime talk to bankers.
If anything the banking trade lost the most in all this. I agree some of the bankers should be in gaol and the developers maybe . But for better just to take all their personal wealth from them. If that happens then anyone coming after them will think twice about doing similar.

brown envelope trade,

no tribunals mentioned brown envelopes. One mentioned a white envelope and one mentioned a white plastic shopping bag. It was not limited to links with political parties who have involvement in the current government.

all those nice Judges and all involved with the Mahon Tribunal who let him off scott free,

so yuo hold the justice system in contempt. if you can't prove guilt please don't assume it!

all his former minions in Fianna Fail who are now stinking rich,the publicans in his local pubs.

the Pub trade is really taking a hit as well.

I posted elsewhere the stats of the top ten pensions three are former FF ministers.

http://www.finance.gov.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=6506&CatID=10&StartDate=1+January+2011&m=f

Losers:Students,Disabled People,Sick people,General members of the public.

Why should rich students not pay their own way?
What is a "general member " of the public?

Tragedy

Monty Burnz wrote: »

Wow, reading that it sounds like Fianna Failure did a cracking job. I'll be sure to vote for them 1,2, and 3 in the order of my preference in my local constituency...

Tragedy, some what you are citing as good things (the slashing of the personal tax burden for example) is just an example of economic mismanagement - an unsustainable vote-buying giveaway that allowed the country to become overly dependent on a once-off bubble bonanza of property transaction taxes.

Similarly, you point to increased spending in the public sector - where are the corresponding improvements in public services? Or has all this money simply been squandered? (lower pupil-teacher ratios I will certainly acknowledge as a genuine improvement - sadly the ratios are rising again)

Where did I say they were good things?
Please don't put words in my mouth.