FG get finance, Labour get public sector reform

th3 s1aught3r

Surely it should have been the other way round....
Labour should be sorting out the banks and FG should be sorting out the public sector. Are they taking the piss with a Labour Minister, whose party are beholden to the public sector unions, are seriously going to reform the PS in any meaningful way ?

De Dannan

There will be no meaningful reform
Sindo
If anything, Fine Gael will be seen to have capitulated more as it is handing over responsibility for reform of the public sector to Labour, whose core support is drawn from the public sector.
The programme envisages no more than 22,000 voluntary redundancies in the public sector, a long way short of Fine Gael's election promise to reduce the numbers employed by 30,000.
Fine Gael is expected to defend this U-turn by stating that 2,500 voluntary redundancies have already taken place in the public sector since January

However, the Fine Gael decision to hand reform of the public sector to Labour will provoke fury among many Fine Gael TDs, and cause uproar among the huge numbers who voted for Fine Gael.
Furthermore, it reduces the Government's chances of re-negotiating the EU-IMF bailout since our public spending excess is seen as a chronic problem in Europe.

sollar

Labour have a better relationship with the public service and the unions. They are better placed to bring the public sector along. FG acting the big man would not have achieved half what labour will.

Flex

sollar wrote: »

Labour have a better relationship with the public service and the unions. They are better placed to bring the public sector along. FG acting the big man would not have achieved half what labour will.

I find this attitude very disappointing. With the state the economy is in and the terrible predictions on the horizon for the country, there are still sections of society who feel they should be mollycoddled and indulged by the government in order to agree to be 'brought along'... Left wing economic influence in the government will ensure we'll never get out of this mess, just as it did in the 1980's.

sollar

Flex wrote: »

I find this attitude very disappointing. With the state the economy is in and the terrible predictions on the horizon for the country, there are still sections of society who feel they should be mollycoddled and indulged by the government in order to agree to be 'brought along'... Left wing economic influence in the government will ensure we'll never get out of this mess, just as it did in the 1980's.

I don't see what the problem is with that. Do you think it likely that public servants are going to wish a heavy hand upon themselves.

BTW nobody is looking to be mollycoddled.

Bullseye1

This will be a big point for Labour to prove to the rest of the electorate that public sector reforms can be achieved under their methods. Everyone including the dog on the street knows the public sector is bloated and is just too expensive in our current economic state. So how do the plan on reducing the huge wage bill.

gigino

sollar wrote: »

Do you think it likely that public servants are going to wish a heavy hand upon themselves.

Do not tar us all with the same brush. Many middle and top people in the public service know its unsustainable to continue with public sector wages amonst the highest in the world, given the country is one of the most bankrupt in the world. Spending on the public service doubled between 1999 and 2009. Reforming it now is not "wishing a heavy hand upon ourselves". We must thing of the good of the country as we are in a very serious situation.

As regards the OP's point, as someone else said putting Labour in charge of public sector reform is like putting a drug cartel in charge of drug reform.

3DataModem

Genius move by FG.

Swingeing PS cuts by Minister: Govt wins, Labour castigated.
No cuts by Minister; Labour castigated.

Worthy of FF themselves.

rumour

Flex wrote: »

I find this attitude very disappointing. With the state the economy is in and the terrible predictions on the horizon for the country, there are still sections of society who feel they should be mollycoddled and indulged by the government in order to agree to be 'brought along'... Left wing economic influence in the government will ensure we'll never get out of this mess, just as it did in the 1980's.

Disappointing is an understatement from my perspective. This government is doomed to deliver the 1980's.

Unity of purpose is out the window and jobs for the boys prevails. I just can't fathom it. The country will be maifestly insolvent shortly.....after agreeing a programme for recovery based on optimistic growth and tax receipts we said 2014.Now we've just abondoned that and say 2015 even as the income tax receipts fall.
All this left wing talk is such an utter indulgence, left wing right wing are no longer relevant, the first step of our new government is to promise the public sector their wages won't be touched and to tell the people funding these wages they'll have to wait another year for us to get it under control.

Brazen is a polite expresson, utter stupidity for the sake of immediate political expediency between labour and fg is another way of looking at it.

Ultimately all the election rhetoric has proved to be nonsense, what we get is a government that represents first the publicsector (croke park agreement) infront of everything else. The private sector can just shut up and pay more taxes or leave.

That appears depressingly now for me the only remaining viable option. Leave Lab and fg to handle the demise of a country whose main purpose to exist is to protect a public sector wage agreement at the expense of all else.

Uncle Ben

3DataModem wrote: »

Genius move by FG.

Swingeing PS cuts by Minister: Govt wins, Labour castigated.
No cuts by Minister; Labour castigated.

Worthy of FF themselves.

I would think that its FG that may have the problems. Lab has secured no cuts to sw, child benefit, no increase in college fees, a minor upward adjustment in their PS redundancy package and control of ps reform with Jack O Connor of Siptu/Ictu sitting on the LP NEC! All the above will leave very little room to manouvere for a FG party that promised cuts to tax increases on a ratio of 3:1

femur61

I suppose in reality Labour have a better relationship with the PS. I am glad to see the hospitals will have funding determined on performance because the A&E in my local hospital is awful. Its an awful like the conditions set out by the IMF/EU!

rumour

Uncle Ben wrote: »

I would think that its FG that may have the problems. Lab has secured no cuts to sw, child benefit, no increase in college fees, a minor upward adjustment in their PS redundancy package and control of ps reform with Jack O Connor of Siptu/Ictu sitting on the LP NEC! All the above will leave very little room to manouvere for a FG party that promised cuts to tax increases on a ratio of 3:1

So the bearded brethern are back in power?

sollar

gigino wrote: »

Do not tar us all with the same brush..

Whats this us business gigino your not a public servant

gigino wrote: »

Reforming it now is not "wishing a heavy hand upon ourselves". We must thing of the good of the country as we are in a very serious situation.

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said reform is wishing a heavy hand. The public service is ripe for reform now and if handled in a reasonable fashion will work out well imo.

I know plenty of people want the sledgehammer taken to it but thats not going to work. 300,000 people aren't going to be battered into submission.

Uncle Ben

rumour wrote: »

So the bearded brethern are back in power?

I believe so, didn't JOC speak at todays conf. seeking a vote for approval.

sollar

rumour wrote: »

Ultimately all the election rhetoric has proved to be nonsense, what we get is a government that represents first the publicsector (croke park agreement) infront of everything else. The private sector can just shut up and pay more taxes or leave.

Are you forgetting that they are going to leave dole intact too and child benefit. Why aren't you calling for these to be cut. After all the social welfare bill is 22 billion. The PS paybill is 17 billion.

rumour

sollar wrote: »

Are you forgetting that they are going to leave dole intact too and child benefit. Why aren't you calling for these to be cut. After all the social welfare bill is 22 billion. The PS paybill is 17 billion.

To me social welfare applies to all citizens of the republic. I don't agree with fraud and perhaps it is excessive but the bill has gone up because of the recession, a prudent government would save for the rainy day and plan for this eventuality.....instead what we have are massively bloated public sector pay levels and maintaining them is more important than anything else on the agenda of this government.

sollar

rumour wrote: »

To me social welfare applies to all citizens of the republic. I don't agree with fraud and perhaps it is excessive but the bill has gone up because of the recession, a prudent government would save for the rainy day and plan for this eventuality.....instead what we have are massively bloated public sector pay levels and maintaining them is more important than anything else on the agenda of this government.

22 Billion on welfare and the state is bringing in 32 billion. It couldn't be more obvious where the real problem lies.

rumour

sollar wrote: »

22 Billion on welfare and the state is bringing in 32 billion. It couldn't be more obvious where the real problem lies.

What should we do let them starve?

This, with good governance is a transitory problem...public sector wages are a completely different permananet issue.

By the way I do not think welfare should be an incentive not to work. Just that it is our last defense as a nation for our citizens. It ismore important than the wages of government employees. Thats my opinion which is obviously not the same as the governments.

Amhran Nua

sollar wrote: »

Are you forgetting that they are going to leave dole intact too and child benefit. Why aren't you calling for these to be cut. After all the social welfare bill is 22 billion. The PS paybill is 17 billion.

For some fun with numbers, that's almost €55,000 per public sector worker per annum, with an average industrial wage of just over €30,000 per year.

sollar wrote: »

22 Billion on welfare and the state is bringing in 32 billion. It couldn't be more obvious where the real problem lies.

400,000 people receiving €200 a week comes to €4 billion a year. The problems are a bit more nuanced than dole recipients, I would start by pointing out that up to a third of local authority budgets are being spent on social and affordable housing purchased at above market rates from whoever. The entire programme needs to be restructured to take advantage of collapsing house prices and the removal of clientelism by local politicians. There are a lot more areas to be considered, but that's one good example to start with. Portacabins, quangos, the list is extensive.

gigino

Amhran Nua wrote: »

For some fun with numbers, that's almost €55,000 per public sector worker per annum, with an average industrial wage of just over €30,000 per year.

When you look at it like that, its astonishing all right.
Is there any other country ( especially a bankrupt country ? ) in the world where average public sector pay is so much more - € 25,000 per year more according to the above figures you supply - than average industrial wage?

th3 s1aught3r

gigino wrote: »

When you look at it like that, its astonishing all right.
Is there any other country ( especially a bankrupt country ? ) in the world where average public sector pay is so much more - € 25,000 per year more according to the above figures you supply - than average industrial wage?

I cannot see how we can really go to Europe and ask for favours when we are spending so much day to day in public sector wages and systemic waste. They will just laugh at us

Amhran Nua

th3 s1aught3r wrote: »

I cannot see how we can really go to Europe and ask for favours when we are spending so much day to day in public sector wages and systemic waste. They will just laugh at us

As I understand it, most European countries have a higher per capita spend on public sector wages, albeit because they have large modern militaries. Also, if you fired the entire public sector to the last man, you wouldn't be breaking even.

Lookit, lads and ladies, the point I'm trying to make is there is no sword of Alexander to cut this Gordian knot. It must be a careful, detailed analysis of every aspect of expenditure and income, and here's the vital part, exchequer and non exchequer, culminating in equally careful and detailed cuts and restructuring.

You won't find your answers in a discussion forum, and you won't find them without a lot more information than we, the great unwashed, presently have access to. If you want action, press for more information.

Amhran Nua

A little support for the previous comment, as that has become de rigeur for this forum, which is a good thing:

There is a widespread assumption that The Exchequer Accounts represent the Government Accounts. This is not true.

The Exchequer Account only represents money which actually passes through the Exchequer Account in the Department of Finance. There are a multitude of government receipts and expenditures that do not pass through the Exchequer Account. These should form part of any analysis of our public finances.

Yet, time and again it is the Exchequer Accounts that get the only media exposure. One reason for this is that they are released every month and are available in a readily digestible form. A second reason is that many commentators and observers simply show no inclination to verify the statistics they use and go with the most accessible information.

Just one example should be enough to highlight the relative uselessness of depending on the Exchequer Accounts as a measure of the overall Public Finances. Government revenue is examined below the fold.

Most months we examine the tax figures from the Exchequer Accounts. This is useful as a gauge of the patterns in tax revenues in the economy. See posts here. However, not one of these posts mentions PRSI, Motor Tax, or Commercial Rates.

Do I just leave them out? Of course not. These taxes do not form part of The Exchequer Account so we do not get monthly statistics on them. These are significant sources of revenue for the government.

The Exchequer Accounts reveal a tax revenue in 2009 around €32.5 billion. This figure is broadcast far and wide as the government’s tax take. This is not true. It might come as a surprise to many to hear that the tax take in 2009 was actually €44.6 billion. This is a substantial difference. Here are the 2009 figures from the Central Statistics Office.

The Exchequer Accounts include some measures of non-tax revenue. Current non-tax revenues include surplus incomes, royalties, interest, dividends from semi-state companies and other receipts. Capital revenues include some EU receipts, loan repayments, and sale of state assets. These came to €1,728 million. Added to tax revenue above this gives a total of €46,350 million.

And even then this is not a measure of total government revenue. There are a huge range of charges, fees and fines levied by government departments that do not flow through the Exchequer Account yet clearly form part of government revenue.

In the parlance of our public finances, these are called “Appropriations in aid”. All of the non-exchequer taxes listed above are defined as appropriations in aid. In fact, some of them don’t even appear in the overall central government account. For example, Motor Tax and Rates are paid to local authorities.

At this point a definition is required of “appropriations-in-aid”. We can get one from page three of The White Paper.

Appropriations-in-aid: These are receipts which may be retained by a Department or Office to offset expenditure instead of being paid into the Exchequer Account of the Central Fund.

The expenditure figures quoted in the Exchequer Account are net of these appropriations-in-aid. These monies aren’t counted by the Exchequer because they stay within the relevant department. If we want to get a measure of how much money the government is collecting we should add these receipts and if we want total expenditure we should look at the gross expenditure figure.

These appropriations-in-aid form a substantial part of central government revenue but because they still within the department that collects them they do not form part of the Exchequer revenue. I repeat – the Exchequer Accounts do not represent the public finances.

In 2009 these “appropriations in aid” totalled €15.9 billion. See Table 1 on page 16 here. This is €15.9 billion of government revenue which is ignored in the public debate because it does not form part of the Exchequer Account. In 2000, this figure was €2.2 billion and in 2005 this was €9.7 billion.

It is rather difficult to determine how this figure is broken down but a good place to start is the €9.7 billion the Department of Social Welfare received from the Social Insurance Fund for social welfare payments.

Here are some of the main appropriations in aid collected by departments and government agencies in 2009 (taken from here).

Although some come from external source (EU) most of this comes from our pockets. If we avoid double counting PRSI contributions to the Social Insurance Fund and the Broadcasting License Fee we find that government revenue in 2009 was closer to €53 billion. This is the €44.6 billion in tax revenue, the €1.7 billion in non-tax revenue, and roughly €6.5 billion of revenues excluded from these categories that are classified as “appropriations-in-aid”.

And even then this is still an underestimate of government revenue. While it does include Motor Tax and Commercial Rates collected by local authorities, it still omits commercial water charges, domestic service charges, parking charges and fines, and a whole range of other charges levied by local authorities. In 2009, local authorities collected €3.6 billion in addition to the receipts already mentioned.

With all this included we find that total government revenue in Ireland in 2009 was approximately €56.5 billion euro. This is a long way from the €32.5 billion figure from the Exchequer Accounts that gets far more coverage than it deserves.

Here is what it looks like.

Analysts within my own group have looked over these figures and come up with considerably more severe numbers than the omnipresent €20 billion deficit, which would echo the ominous rumblings from the outgoing government, and the "ashen faces" of incoming politicians, but I'm unwilling to broadcast those numbers until I've analysed and verified them in their entirety.

hatrickpatrick

Flex wrote: »

I find this attitude very disappointing. With the state the economy is in and the terrible predictions on the horizon for the country, there are still sections of society who feel they should be mollycoddled and indulged by the government in order to agree to be 'brought along'... Left wing economic influence in the government will ensure we'll never get out of this mess, just as it did in the 1980's.

*sigh*

It was right wing anarcho-capitalism which got us IN to this mess in the first place. Or have you forgotten that?
I'm fairly sure having totally unregulated sections of the economy which can literally do whatever they want isn't something which would have been allowed under a left wing government.

gigino

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It was right wing anarcho-capitalism which got us IN to this mess in the first place.

Bertie Ahern said he was a "socialist". He increased government spending to those who received government spending countless times, to levels higher than any socialist leader in the world. You cannot put all the blame on capitalism just because our government ran the country very badly, spent like there was no tomorrow, and allowed our banks to borrow vast amounts abroad to give out without proper regulation.

sarumite

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

*sigh*

It was right wing anarcho-capitalism which got us IN to this mess in the first place. Or have you forgotten that?
I'm fairly sure having totally unregulated sections of the economy which can literally do whatever they want isn't something which would have been allowed under a left wing government.

I think you maybe conflating the the causes of our debt to the causes of our deficit.

Tora Bora

Sooner this government falls the better, so we can put FF back in power.

zephyro

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It was right wing anarcho-capitalism which got us IN to this mess in the first place.

Eh? The reason we're in this mess is because 1) the government guaranteed all the liabilities of the Irish banks and 2) the government increased spending hugely based on a temporary increase in tax revenues.

th3 s1aught3r

gigino wrote: »

Bertie Ahern said he was a "socialist". .

Bertie was whatever you wanted him to be

jimmycrackcorm

I'm surprised that the media and people in general haven't picked up on the key flaw in the public sector reform plan which is that it is solely composed of voluntary redundancy.

There's going to be no effort at picking out jobs that are superfluous or non-essential and instead we may end up with thousands of frontline staff gone and lots of highly paid useless mandarins still in place.

Sleepy

Is this not, in reality, playing directly into FF's hands?

It's safe to say that with Labour at the helm, public sector reform will be nowhere near the level it needs to be (it's simply impossible to bring it under control without taking an axe to staff or salary levels - and a strategy of voluntary redundancies will lead to the best and brightest of the PS leaving, not the deadweight).

So, assuming PS reform doesn't deliver and that FG have hamstrung themselves by acquiescing to demands to protect Welfare levels etc. it's safe to say we're not going to be getting out of this mess.

Fast forward to the next election:

Labour, have failed to bring the PS under control. Assuming they make any serious attempt to do so, they'll have lost much of their current PS vote. Assuming they don't, they'll lose much of their private sector voters who felt efficiencies and waste reduction were "fairer" than hitting payroll. Either way, they'll lose votes.

Fine Gael will lose votes for not delivering the PS reform they campaigned for. The fact that it was a Labour minister who failed in the task won't spare them the wrath of the electorate.

How could Fianna Fail "the all things to all men party" not manage to gain hugely in the following election?

RobbieTheRobber

Sleepy wrote: »

It's safe to say that with Labour at the helm, public sector reform will be nowhere near the level it needs to be (it's simply impossible to bring it under control without taking an axe to staff or salary levels - and a strategy of voluntary redundancies will lead to the best and brightest of the PS leaving, not the deadweight).

You make two points here one that voluntary redundancy will see the brightest and best leave ,and in point two you lament the lack of an axe being taken to wages.

Do you not feel that taking an axe to wages would see the brightest and best leave?

Chardee MacDennis

Gov will collapse in a year or two and FF will at least double their seats if they stick with this imo.

well done FG; **** in opposition and now even ****ter in power...

Pharaoh1

Has anyone given the figures on how much the PS pay and pensions bill will decrease by over the next say 2-3 years?
With pensions and lump sums to be paid out together with some recruitment there seems to be no idea of the figures.
How much will increments add to the cost? FG very subtly avoided all mention of this during the election.

Also am I alone in thinking the entire programme for govt is a complete sham.
No income tax rises, no PS pay cuts, no welfare cuts, no cuts in childrens allowance, water and property tax maybe in a couple of years, VAT cuts as well as an increases, no college fees, selling of any assets long fingered and lots more vague stuff.

You would think we didn't have a deficit at all. What are the EU/IMF making of all this or will we be in for a massive shock in a few months time when we are instructed to take some firm action.

I'm also amazed by the media reaction - with a few notable exceptions.
Brendan Keenan has a good piece in the indo today where he observes that only 2 of the 64 pages deal with the public finance crisis.
Maybe it is intended to be a sham and within a short time it will all be in the dustbin.
Anyone have an idea - I'm lost.

murphaph

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

You make two points here one that voluntary redundancy will see the brightest and best leave ,and in point two you lament the lack of an axe being taken to wages.

Do you not feel that taking an axe to wages would see the brightest and best leave?

Just axe the pay of people who are overpaid compared to the private sector or public sectors elsewhere in Europe. There'll be nowhere to scarper off to if this is done. More menial workers (binmen etc.) can be paid a bit less than the private sector as they have no special skills that would enable them to leave at the drop of a hat.

The bulk of the public sector is not made up of brain surgeons and even these characters are way overpaid compared to their counterparts in say, Germany or the UK.

Sleepy

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

You make two points here one that voluntary redundancy will see the brightest and best leave ,and in point two you lament the lack of an axe being taken to wages.

Do you not feel that taking an axe to wages would see the brightest and best leave?

In normal circumstances, you might be right. However, we're not in normal circumstances. The only ones that'll take a lucrative voluntary redundancy package will be those that can find work in the private sector, or are near enough to retirement that the package will be little more than an early retirement package.

When I say "taking an axe" to the PS, I'd much rather see a scalpel taken to it to cut numbers prudently i.e. cutting those that aren't worth their salaries or reducing their salaries to what they are worth. The problem is, the unions won't allow that - the entire basis of collective bargaining rests on allowing those that aren't worth their salaries to hide behind those that are.

The other fact is that, in these circumstances, cutting salaries isn't as difficult as it might otherwise be. If you were to use as blunt an instrument as a full on 20% paycut for all PS staff, what are they going to do besides whinge? The salaries they're on are *much* higher than the private sector equivalent so there's nowhere to go there that they'll be better off. It's not nice, but tbh, it's not nice knowing that there are people who don't work as hard as you / aren't as productive as you who are being paid more than you because the last government were spineless / corrupt / incompetent / friends of those we're overpaying.

p1akuw47h5r3it

I think this coalition suites everyone and noone at the same time.

If things go belly-up, Fine Gael will blame Labour as Fine Gael have had to make compromises. Labour will blame Fine Gael as they are the majority party,FF will blame FG, Sinn Fein will blame both Labour/Fine Gael and the ULA will just blame everyone as usual.

All the while we'll make no progress and just be in a worse state than now.

We needed a majority FG goverment imo, or at the very least a Labour majority.

gigino

DanDan6592 wrote: »

We needed a majority FG goverment imo, or at the very least a Labour majority.

or a FG supported by FF on economic matters ( reverse Tallaght Strategy )

ArtSmart

Flex wrote: »

I find this attitude very disappointing. With the state the economy is in and the terrible predictions on the horizon for the country, there are still sections of society who feel they should be mollycoddled and indulged by the government in order to agree to be 'brought along'... Left wing economic influence in the government will ensure we'll never get out of this mess, just as it did in the 1980's.

you favour the aul fascist approach I take it?

damned people of the state and their damned democracy!

well, at least private employers can savage their employees, so all is not lost.

gigino

"All is not lost ?"

I am afraid that for more than a few people in the private sector, all is lost. They have lost their jobs, their businesses, their pensions, their investments, what they often spent 20 or 30 years building up.

Time the mollycoddled public sector realised that, and joined the real world.

murphaph

ArtSmart wrote: »

you favour the aul fascist approach I take it?

damned people of the state and their damned democracy!

well, at least private employers can savage their employees, so all is not lost.

Paying people what they are worth and no more is not "savaging" them. Irish public servants are overpaid compared to their private sector equivalents and to their public sector counterparts in the countries that are now lending us money to pay their wages.

You make an interesting point about democracy and you seem to have missed the irony of it. The vast bulk of the electorate have a gun placed to their heads by a small minority of that electorate and are threatened with strikes if their pay premium is not maintained. Interesting form of democracy.

ArtSmart

ArtSmart wrote: »

you favour the aul fascist approach I take it?

damned people of the state and their damned democracy!

well, at least private employers can savage their employees, so all is not lost.

murphaph wrote: »

Paying people what they are worth and no more is not "savaging" them.

I agree. Tell IBEC that.

Irish public servants are overpaid compared to their private sector equivalents

sigh.

and to their public sector counterparts in the countries that are now lending us money to pay their wages.

true. but relative to cost of living factors? I remember Fintan O' Toole dissected that myth some time ago.

You make an interesting point about democracy and you seem to have missed the irony of it. The vast bulk of the electorate have a gun placed to their heads by a small minority of that electorate and are threatened with strikes if their pay premium is not maintained. Interesting form of democracy.

apparently a democracy can be judged 'by its treatment of minorities' - (Gandhi i think)
public servants are a bit more than a minority however.
plus far as i remember one of the principles of democracy is agreement - as opposed to coercion.

but this much is for sure - start playing hardball with the public/civil servants at this stage and you'll get a major push back - that last thing we need.

On the labour = reform - I'd rather appoint an ambitious ex-poacher to the position of gamekeeper than a young earl full of beans and little else.

anyway, thing is this.

Europe/ the US got rich over the last two decades because of the rise of consumers (amongst other things of course.)

wages to public servants are spread across the country - pretty much in equal ratios to population. (teachers, garda etc etc.) and to a lesser extent, civil servants.

reduce their monies and you reduce their capacity to consume, locally and otherwise.

the childlike book-keeping exercise of FF - balance the books at all costs, is and was a disaster. removing more and more money from the economy - especially the consumer class = economic stagnation and the death of SMEs.

dots03

BastardPrince wrote: »

Gov will collapse in a year or two and FF will at least double their seats if they stick with this imo.

well done FG; **** in opposition and now even ****ter in power...

How about everyone reserves judgement on this coalition until they are actually in Government and have time to implement policy.

Analysing the success and impact of a new government or a specific appointment at this stage is a little premature...but this is the general problem with analysis (and journalism) in this country.

Gumbo

gigino wrote: »

I am afraid that for more than a few people in the private sector, all is lost. They have lost their jobs, their businesses, their pensions, their investments, what they often spent 20 or 30 years building up.

and alot more HAVENT lost their jobs, income or pensions or investments.
why quite alot have got pay increases including those in retail work (Dunnes Stores etc), AIB, BOI etc etc etc

most pensions have stabilsed and are now back to their boom time values, you need to check your figures gigino......

my private pension with AIB from my previous job is still up at least 15% on my contributions and im sure there are more that paid alot more than me as i didnt put much in tbh.

th3 s1aught3r

kceire wrote: »

and alot more HAVENT lost their jobs, income or pensions or investments.
why quite alot have got pay increases including those in retail work (Dunnes Stores etc), AIB, BOI etc etc etc

.

On what basis were people working in AIB, BOI given pay increases?. Its seems odd seeing as the banks are insolvent and using public money to stay afloat

galway2007

th3 s1aught3r wrote: »

Surely it should have been the other way round....
Labour should be sorting out the banks and FG should be sorting out the public sector. Are they taking the piss with a Labour Minister, whose party are beholden to the public sector unions, are seriously going to reform the PS in any meaningful way ?

And think that private sector idiots voted FG thinking they were going to screw the public sector
No wonder this country is ****ed

galway2007

murphaph wrote: »

Just axe the pay of people who are overpaid compared to the private sector or public sectors elsewhere in Europe. There'll be nowhere to scarper off to if this is done. More menial workers (binmen etc.) can be paid a bit less than the private sector as they have no special skills that would enable them to leave at the drop of a hat.

The bulk of the public sector is not made up of brain surgeons and even these characters are way overpaid compared to their counterparts in say, Germany or the UK.

They have to cut your dole first

RobbieTheRobber

Sleepy wrote: »

In normal circumstances, you might be right. However, we're not in normal circumstances. The only ones that'll take a lucrative voluntary redundancy package will be those that can find work in the private sector, or are near enough to retirement that the package will be little more than an early retirement package.

This is debatable, the most likely to leave will be the young and unmarried\childless.

When I say "taking an axe" to the PS, I'd much rather see a scalpel taken to it to cut numbers prudently i.e. cutting those that aren't worth their salaries or reducing their salaries to what they are worth. The problem is, the unions won't allow that - the entire basis of collective bargaining rests on allowing those that aren't worth their salaries to hide behind those that are.

But you didnt say a sclapel you said an axe which sends a clear message to me, that your not looking for reform but retribution!

Rarely is their need to call an axeman when you only want a trim!

The other fact is that, in these circumstances, cutting salaries isn't as difficult as it might otherwise be. If you were to use as blunt an instrument as a full on 20% paycut for all PS staff, what are they going to do besides whinge? The salaries they're on are *much* higher than the private sector equivalent so there's nowhere to go there that they'll be better off. It's not nice, but tbh, it's not nice knowing that there are people who don't work as hard as you / aren't as productive as you who are being paid more than you because the last government were spineless / corrupt / incompetent / friends of those we're overpaying.

Are you basing these claims on the average wage?
do you know how many people who are none frontline staff(the untouchables) earn this PS average wage of 55,000?

gigino

RobbieTheRobber wrote: »

do you know how many people who are none frontline staff(the untouchables) earn this PS average wage of 55,000?

Frontline and backline staff, managers and cleaners ....this average p.s. wage south of the border needs to be brought more in line with eg UK average public sector wage of 22 or 23k stg a year, as we simply cannot afford to keep paying our public servants twice what the UK pays theirs. Our public service unions are taking the piss completely and ruining / have ruined the country, along with the regulator, central bank , government and bankers. ( all of whom are effectively public service now, with the pay and pension, and none of whom have been punished.). I am surprised there are not marches / demonstrations about this by the ordinary people, most of whom are not public sector union members.

Gumbo

th3 s1aught3r wrote: »

On what basis were people working in AIB, BOI given pay increases?. Its seems odd seeing as the banks are insolvent and using public money to stay afloat

yes AIB paid a 3.5% pay increase to every staff member below manager lever in or around October 2009 in conjunction with the "Towards 2016 agreement", PS staff were due to get this also but it was scrapped to the PS.

BOI was a more bonus thing, sorry not a pay rise.

gigino wrote: »

Frontline and backline staff, managers and cleaners ....this average p.s. wage south of the border needs to be brought more in line with eg UK average public sector wage of 22 or 23k stg a year

you cannot pay somebody in Ireland a rate the same as the UK/NI, its an irrelevant argument, given the much lower cost of living in the UK/NI and many many other european countries.

th3 s1aught3r

galway2007 wrote: »

And think that private sector idiots voted FG thinking they were going to screw the public sector
No wonder this country is ****ed

No I think they voted FG so that they would reform the public sector
I dont think you can call them idiots for doing that