Talk Talk Announces 575 Job Losses in Waterford

HellFireClub

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/talk-talk-announce-575-job-losses-in-waterford-519559.html

Up to 575 jobs are to go at the Talk Talk call centre in Co Waterford.

Workers have been meeting with management at the facility this afternoon and it is understood that the centre is to close with all roles being moved to the UK.

The company is one of the largest employers in the south-east.

A 30-day consultation and transition period starts tomorrow, with operations winding down by the start of next month.

The call centre manages support for customers based in the UK.

Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/talk-talk-announce-575-job-losses-in-waterford-519559.html#ixzz1XHFGKZIS

Rabidlamb

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/loss-of-575-talk-talk-jobs-leaves-waterford-reeling-2869790.html

In a statement the company said call volumes across the whole of the contact business are down 40pc year-on-year. It said the vast majority of its customer support is now online.

Talk Talk said the majority of business in the Waterford call centre will be moved to other companies contracted to do the work since June.

"As our largest in-house site, the proposed closure of Waterford also allows us to reduce complexity, simplify our skill sets and bring benefits to customers as quickly as possible," Talk talk said.

Must have known it was coming so.

Jessibelle

That's a seriously bad blow to the South-East They were one of the bigger employers in Waterford no?

RichardAnd

This is a dreadful piece of news for the area. The loss of so many jobs will be felt keenly by the local economy.

What I would say about this is that it's likely these losses are not a result of the economic downturn. It seems that Talk Talk were moved to make this decision by the rise in the number of online transactions its customers make. As online technology becomes more and more advanced, it seems that less people will be needed for a plethora of tasks.

Of course, technological advances have always brought job losses (eg, the luddites). However, it does seem to me that computer technology has the potential to make human labour obsolete on a far grander scale than automatic looms. Consider that one automated computer system could take over the jobs of 500 people; not a pleasant thought.

Crusty Blaa

Rabidlamb wrote: »

http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/loss-of-575-talk-talk-jobs-leaves-waterford-reeling-2869790.html



Must have known it was coming so.

From who I have talked to so far, it came completely out of the blue. Most of the staff heard about it through local radio and RTE.ie before any official word was relayed to them. Shocking lack of respect.

munchkin_utd

they also mention

"Waterford is our only site that operates with the euro and the proposed change will therefore also limit our exposure to exchange rate fluctuations."

Not to mention that the UK minimum wage rate for 18- to 21-year-olds is £4.83 or €5.50, and a pound or €1.10 ish more for >21 year olds.

In Ireland its €8.65 plus all the out of hours bonuses.

for 550 employees on a 40 hour week in the UK at say €6 an hour (half<21 half over that) thats a wage bill of €132000 a week.

In Ireland that'd be €190,000 a week, a 58,000 a week difference or 3million euro a year more to operate at the irish minimum wage than the UK minimum wage.

Who would blame them for moving?

Whatever manager suggested abandoning Waterford for an annual potential saving of 3million+ is no doubt getting a good bonus this year, and rightly so for highlighting how expensive it is to do business with Irelands high minimum wage (not to mention other costs that just rub it in altogether)

n97 mini

Roughly the size of the Department of Health.

Imagine if one govt dept was wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

murphaph

RichardAnd wrote: »

Of course, technological advances have always brought job losses (eg, the luddites). However, it does seem to me that computer technology has the potential to make human labour obsolete on a far grander scale than automatic looms. Consider that one automated computer system could take over the jobs of 500 people; not a pleasant thought.

Technological advances have made the life of someone in 2011 a heck of a lot easier than someone in 1911. On the whole, such advances outweigh the drawbacks by orders of magnitude.

thebman

RichardAnd wrote: »

Of course, technological advances have always brought job losses (eg, the luddites). However, it does seem to me that computer technology has the potential to make human labour obsolete on a far grander scale than automatic looms. Consider that one automated computer system could take over the jobs of 500 people; not a pleasant thought.

Yes but for the jobs lost, you still need staff albeit less that are skilled enough to repair the machines and support the software.

The knowledge economy the government talks about is really, get yourselves educated because your job will most likely be automated in the next 50 years if technology is moving in that way.

Consider the auto-drive car, now consider that if they do get it right, that is most of the employment in the taxi industry gone overnight.

Heroditas

munchkin_utd wrote: »

they also mention

"Waterford is our only site that operates with the euro and the proposed change will therefore also limit our exposure to exchange rate fluctuations."

Not to mention that the UK minimum wage rate for 18- to 21-year-olds is £4.83 or €5.50, and a pound or €1.10 ish more for >21 year olds.

In Ireland its €8.65 plus all the out of hours bonuses.

for 550 employees on a 40 hour week in the UK at say €6 an hour (half<21 half over that) thats a wage bill of €132000 a week.

In Ireland that'd be €190,000 a week, a 58,000 a week difference or 3million euro a year more to operate at the irish minimum wage than the UK minimum wage.

Who would blame them for moving?

Whatever manager suggested abandoning Waterford for an annual potential saving of 3million+ is no doubt getting a good bonus this year, and rightly so for highlighting how expensive it is to do business with Irelands high minimum wage (not to mention other costs that just rub it in altogether)

I wonder how much they were saving in corporation tax though by being here. UK corpo tax is more than double what it is here.
Still, they'll save even more by going to somewhere like India.
Terrible shame for the area.

Diarmuid

n97 mini wrote: »

Roughly the size of the Department of Health.

Imagine if one govt dept was wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

We can only dream

Nody

Heroditas wrote: »

I wonder how much they were saving in corporation tax though by being here. UK corpo tax is more than double what it is here.
Still, they'll save even more by going to somewhere like India.
Terrible shame for the area.

This is a call center though, their profits can be going through a number of other companies no matter were the call center is located.

Psychedelic

RichardAnd wrote: »

What I would say about this is that it's likely these losses are not a result of the economic downturn. It seems that Talk Talk were moved to make this decision by the rise in the number of online transactions its customers make. As online technology becomes more and more advanced, it seems that less people will be needed for a plethora of tasks.

Seems like these jobs are not being lost to automated systems but are being moved elsewhere:

We announced back in June the selection of Wipro and Transcom as long-term strategic Outsourced Partners and the proposed closure of Waterford would see the majority of work transferred to Transcom, Wipro and CCi as well as our UK sites.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0907/talktalk_statement.html

artful_codger

i feel bad for the employees in waterford, i also feel bad for Talk Talks customers who'll now have to deal with unintelligible poorly trained agents in Bangalore or wherever.

jester77

artful_codger wrote: »

i feel bad for the employees in waterford, i also feel bad for Talk Talks customers who'll now have to deal with unintelligible poorly trained agents in Bangalore or wherever.

Wherever is somewhere in the UK, so they will most likely be just as capable at providing the same service as was being provided in Waterford.

This is a major blow to that area and most likely comes down to the high minimum wage and strong Euro against Sterling. It was a mistake that the government increased the minimum wage again when they got into power, instead they should be tackling high costs and driving these down. Unfortunately we will probably hear more similar stories of this type in the future.

Mr.Micro

Its no surprise to me. There will be more closures before we are finished. We dependent on other nations to provide employment ie the US and UK. Its about time, instead of all the talk that we started creating our own employment if we are so smart. No matter what, this country is expensive to live in and do business in. Stick our heads in the sand like we always do. If we are to be a smart economy then do something about it like teaching maths, science and technology and by experts. We should be top in food production and all related industries. We would have more people visit if we were not so expensive.

munchkin_utd

jester77 wrote: »

Wherever is somewhere in the UK, so they will most likely be just as capable at providing the same service as was being provided in Waterford.

from some of the people they interviewed on RTE for the news, Indians would be easier to understand than some of the characters there.

One lad literally was unintelligible.

HellFireClub

Mr.Micro wrote: »

Its no surprise to me. There will be more closures before we are finished. We dependent on other nations to provide employment ie the US and UK. Its about time, instead of all the talk that we started creating our own employment if we are so smart. No matter what, this country is expensive to live in and do business in. Stick our heads in the sand like we always do. If we are to be a smart economy then do something about it like teaching maths, science and technology and by experts. We should be top in food production and all related industries. We would have more people visit if we were not so expensive.

Nail on the head, I've always argued on this forum that the extent of our job creation policy has been to throw money at the IDA and to let them throw money and FDI. There has never been any decent attempt to create jobs from within, in this country.

HellFireClub

And another thing I take extreme exception to, is these civil servant and political clowns (IDA and government ministers), weighing into the debate now claiming offence that the company didn't contact them sooner.

If the government wanted to do something to stave off these kind of situations, they would be forcing semi states such as the ESB and and Bord Gais to reduce their outrageous charges, they would be going into the local authorities and reducing the obscene rates that ONLY businesses have to pay to the local authorities, they would be making changes every week to restore competitiveness to the economy and reduce the cost of doing business.

This cribbing and moaning that is going on now disgusts me, the people running this operation probably knew full well, like the rest of us do, that nothing of any real substance is going to change in relation to the lowering the cost of running a business here in this state. They only copped what the rest of us know well, you can't blame them for making a decision and getting on with it while they still have a business left to run.

Only last week a senior civil servant retired with a 700K golden handshake, this is absolutely indiciative of what has happened to this country in terms of costs, all of this obscene waste of money gets put onto the back of the Irish taxpayer, which includes businesses and individuals.

HellFireClub

Just think about this for a minute and the absolute insanity of the situation that the company was placed in...

This is a company who claim that they have lost a large part of their customer base because the provision of online customer service solutions has taken a 40% chunk out of their telecoms customer service business solutions...

Yet we have a government here who claim to be upskilling anyone who ever held a shovel or a trowel, to be qualified for technological positions such as IT, and where is the greatest growth in IT at the moment, ahhh, ONLINE solutions!!!

This governent want to "upskill" or "retrain" anyone with a builders crack in their trousers, but when it comes to job creation, the approach is the same dumb and ineffective approach as before, "bring in a multinational from abroad and we'll train Paddy to put the labels on their boxes for them"...

mike65

Mr.Micro wrote: »

Its no surprise to me. There will be more closures before we are finished. We dependent on other nations to provide employment ie the US and UK. Its about time, instead of all the talk that we started creating our own employment if we are so smart. No matter what, this country is expensive to live in and do business in. Stick our heads in the sand like we always do. If we are to be a smart economy then do something about it like teaching maths, science and technology and by experts. We should be top in food production and all related industries. We would have more people visit if we were not so expensive.

It can be done as well, Dunhill Cuisine is an excellent local example, developed out of nothing since 2004 as part of the Dunhill Ecopark (which employs about 130 people in total). On its own terms its now a great success and won't be relocating anywhere.

RichardAnd

thebman wrote: »

Yes but for the jobs lost, you still need staff albeit less that are skilled enough to repair the machines and support the software.

The knowledge economy the government talks about is really, get yourselves educated because your job will most likely be automated in the next 50 years if technology is moving in that way.

Consider the auto-drive car, now consider that if they do get it right, that is most of the employment in the taxi industry gone overnight.

True, and I'd normally agree fully with you but in this case, I don't think it's as cleanly cuts.

For example, I could go into a call centre of 10 people and write up a software package to automate alot of their work. Let's say that as a result, 6 of those people could be let go because my software cut the required man power. Six people have been put out of work and the only job that was created was the one required to set up and maintain the software.

It's certainly true that the advances in technology create new jobs but I don't think it's a case that 500 jobs go here, 500 appear there.

ChRoMe

HellFireClub wrote: »

This governent want to "upskill" or "retrain" anyone with a builders crack in their trousers, but when it comes to job creation, the approach is the same dumb and ineffective approach as before, "bring in a multinational from abroad and we'll train Paddy to put the labels on their boxes for them"...

Yeah.. but at the same time we dont have the skills/talent to do the R&D work or anything else that isn't essentially packing boxes.

Ole Rodrigo

Part of the problem has been delivering the effective re-education and training to those who are intended to operate in the so called smart economy. This is were highspeed broadband access to everyone is essential -so that training can be delivered effectively. You cannot expect people whose job is under threat to sign up to an evening University course 50 miles away. Retraining must be realistic in the context of peoples lives.

I agree that most of the new jobs growth over the next 10 years will be IT. There was an excellent article on this a few weeks ago by Marc Andreessen, in the WSJ.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html

Rabidlamb

What incentives could the government have offered here ?.
The 575 x €188 x 52 = €5.62 million welfare liability alone must mean they have strategies for this scenario.
Surely 0% employers PRSI or a reduction in corporation tax must have been on the table.

lasnoufle

Rabidlamb wrote: »

What incentives could the government have offered here ?.
The 575 x €188 x 52 = €5.62 million welfare liability alone must mean they have strategies for this scenario.
Surely 0% employers PRSI or a reduction in corporation tax must have been on the table.

Well if the government did that, I can imagine loads of companies would have suddenly shown interest in relocating abroad too...
And I wouldn't blame these companies.

HellFireClub

HellFireClub wrote: »

Just think about this for a minute.......This is a company who claim that they have lost a large part of their customer base because the provision of online customer service solutions has taken a 40% chunk out of their telecoms customer service business solutions...

Yet we have a government here who claim to be upskilling anyone who ever held a shovel or a trowel, to be qualified for technological positions such as IT, and where is the greatest growth in IT at the moment, ahhh, ONLINE solutions!!!

I've been going on for ages about the fact that a more than decade of under-investment in broadband infrastructure and poor education and upskilling of the workforce to take advantage of the internet revolution would eventually come home to roost, and i'm sorry to say we're now seeing it start to happen. Ireland is now NOT properly placed to take advantage of the effect the internet is having on globalisation of multinational business operations. We're under resourced, under invested, under educated, and over priced, and we've courted the multinationals for as long as we can but the sheen is starting to wear off for some of them.

Successive governments here have ignored the fact that by not investing in Online technologies, and not making sure that our workforce is competitive and properly skilled in that sector, we were going to make it an obvious choice for companies such as talk talk to move operations once the customer takeup rates and technology costs became viable to do so. All it required was for the online operations in these companies to reach a tipping point where the figures don't make sense anymore from a cost point of view to be here. The worst part is, we don't have a single thing we can offer them that would make staying here viable. All we can give them is staff that suit the way business was done ten years ago.

Business has changed. Ireland has not.

The really bad news is that it's just the thin end of the wedge. Technology is making call centre operations more and more mobile and less and less relevant every year. We have an advantage in terms of our languages and skills base for the more skilled call centre jobs in sales and higher end IT and customer service, but low skilled call centre positions like entry level support, customer service, and the ones like talk talk are pulling the plug on are going to flock out of this country in greater and greater numbers as the technology to migrate them without impacting on business operations becomes cheaper and more viable, and online interaction takes more and more precedence over phone conversation in the way people want to deal with companies.

Our government has to come up with a plan to protect the jobs we already have in this sector and to make Ireland an attractive option to create new ones. I'm not sure they are aware of how the skills and the business value Ireland offers in this area are becoming less and less relevant to the global, virtualised nature of how business is being done in large companies.

n97 mini

Deleted User wrote: »

I've been going on for ages about the fact that a more than decade of under-investment in broadband infrastructure

That's not really true.

People bemoan the lack of broadband or very fast broadband in very rural areas, up mountains, on Achill island, etc. The reality is rolling out broadband to the sticks won't create any industry.

If you want broadband and other services, you'll find them aplenty in towns and cities, where people and industry are.

Any town of any size will have decent broadband. The industrial estate where Talktalk is would even have affordable gigabit links.

n97 mini

n97 mini wrote: »

That's not really true......If you want broadband and other services, you'll find them aplenty in towns and cities, where people and industry are

That's only partially true, our broadband infrastructure is patchy at best, and it's not at all competitively priced. That's a direct legacy of the limited private sector investment which took place in lieu of the government spending that never happened during the boom. The internet quality situation has undoubtedly improved in the last few years, but even very conservatively speaking we're still 5 years behind a lot of the competing foreign direct investment hotspots, and currently not spending much at all. Our major road and rail networks still don't have full coverage, and much of our network infrastructure outside of industrial areas is still last generation or worse. Even now, our metropolitan area network is only fully coming on stream, which is great for businesses in the capital and for the other key cities, but that's only part of the picture regarding our lack of competitiveness.

We have had no real culture of readiness and exposure to internet for a lot of the last ten years. We are only learning now what other countries have been taking for granted for several years. We're "re-training" people to do what other countries' workforces have been used to for a long time.

Our schools, universities, workplaces, and homes haven't had affordable access to this level of high quality internet services before quite recently, so there's no culture of readiness among graduates and the workforce. While universities in places like hyderabad have been churning out tons of high quality, internet savvy graduates who are strong in maths and sciences and are comfortable with all the emerging tech that modern companies are taking advantage of for several years now, we have been struggling to keep up, cutting investment in schools, and seeing declining maths and sciences levels in our public exams, and less and less interest in our IT graduates from multinationals.

I've seen this in action in places like india, california, and many others. I've been on business in many FDI and IT hotspots and gotten a real sense that the governments and decision makers there are/were ready for the change and the innovation that the internet was about to bring to business. They were embracing it, and were determined to invest properly keep their infrastructure and their education systems up to scratch so that they would be ready to hit the ground running and be an attractive investment location.

By contrast, Ireland has never felt like it had that foresight. Around the time i was seeing all of that readiness in other places, we were singing about breakfast rolls and praising the merits of our "sustainable" construction and property based economy. As a consequence we are now lagging behind in terms of our attractiveness to companies like talk talk and others and still not doing much about it.

Ive seen both ends of this scale, both at the higher skilled end and the lower skilled end of the IT industry. I have seen Indian tech graduates working remotely as cloud test and development coders who could code rings around 90% of irish IT graduates, and i've met call centre staff who were fluent in english, and totally up to speed on web-based customer interaction doing a fantastic job dealing with customers from all over the world for 20% of what an irish rep would be paid for doing the same job.

Other countries are producing lower cost, higher quality employees who will work in a more flexible, less unionised culture than ours. We are not doing anything to redress this balance, yet are shocked and surprised when mojor companies like talk talk, dell, and any number of others choose to move their bases of operations or downsize???

The fact of the matter is we're now not only expensive as a country to do business in in terms of costs, but we're beginning to lag behind in what we can provide in terms of our skills base and workforce adaptability to many sectors too, because we're not keeping up with the changes in the way business is being done. Something needs to be done at a government level to change this or talk talk won't be the last company to up sticks and go walkies.

thebman

n97 mini wrote: »

That's not really true.

People bemoan the lack of broadband or very fast broadband in very rural areas, up mountains, on Achill island, etc. The reality is rolling out broadband to the sticks won't create any industry.

If you want broadband and other services, you'll find them aplenty in towns and cities, where people and industry are.

Any town of any size will have decent broadband. The industrial estate where Talktalk is would even have affordable gigabit links.

This is a seriously uninformed post and dangerously popular opinion on the issue.

Backup that we are affordable compared to other countries as otherwise it is most likely having an effect on FDI to the country.

Then show me why farms can operate without broadband.

Too many people associate broadband with consumer broadband and think ah sure its grand and it isn't costing me that much. It is not grand, it is far below standards elsewhere and to get a quality business line is very expensive compared to countries we are competing with and the evidence is out there if you look for it. Go hang out in the Ireland Offline and Broadband forums and you'll find out how great our broadband is.

ChRoMe

thebman wrote: »

This is a seriously uninformed post and dangerously popular opinion on the issue.

Backup that we are affordable compared to other countries as otherwise it is most likely having an effect on FDI to the country.

Then show me why farms can operate without broadband.

Too many people associate broadband with consumer broadband and think ah sure its grand and it isn't costing me that much. It is not grand, it is far below standards elsewhere and to get a quality business line is very expensive compared to countries we are competing with and the evidence is out there if you look for it. Go hang out in the Ireland Offline and Broadband forums and you'll find out how great our broadband is.

I agree however he is correct that rolling out broadband to remote rural areas will not create industry, its a fantasy to think it will.

bloopy

Is there a way to report spam

thebman

bloopy wrote: »

Is there a way to report spam

You click the button beside the post (left side).

I reported that post though.

n97 mini

thebman wrote: »

This is a seriously uninformed post and dangerously popular opinion on the issue.

Too many people associate broadband with consumer broadband and think ah sure its grand and it isn't costing me that much. It is not grand, it is far below standards

Businesses don't use consumer broadband.

Price a 1Gb link into an industrial estate and I think you'll be surprised at how little it costs. And it can be written off against tax too.

murphaph

n97 mini wrote: »

Businesses don't use consumer broadband.

WRONG!!

SMEs use exactly the same broadband as consumers in 90% of cases, no fibre links etc, just normal "broad"band. The likes of IBM and Microsoft have their T1 links etc but these are certainly the exception.

n97 mini

murphaph wrote: »

WRONG!!

SMEs use exactly the same broadband as consumers in 90% of cases, no fibre links etc, just normal "broad"band. The likes of IBM and Microsoft have their T1 links etc but these are certainly the exception.

Find anyone in this country with a T1 link and then you can call me wrong.

murphaph

n97 mini wrote: »

Find anyone in this country with a T1 link and then you can call me wrong.

You know full well what I mean. T1/E1 links are not used by most businesses. Most businesses use consumer broadband, if at all.

ChRoMe

murphaph wrote: »

You know full well what I mean. T1/E1 links are not used by most businesses. Most businesses use consumer broadband, if at all.

Depends how you are defining consumer broadband. If its relating to the technologies, perhaps. However they are commercial customer packages that incorporate support and redundancy(sometimes).

thebman

n97 mini wrote: »

Businesses don't use consumer broadband.

Price a 1Gb link into an industrial estate and I think you'll be surprised at how little it costs. And it can be written off against tax too.

So there is no problem but you have no evidence there is no problem and we should all go price a 1Gb link to see for ourselves? Everything must be fine so because you said so boss...

Or we could actually look at reports that try to do proper comparisons and which covers consumer and enterprise broadband.
http://www.forfas.ie/media/forfas100122-Broadband-Benchmarking-Ireland.pdf

Which paints a much worse picture than the one you seem to suggest exists where everything is grand because your company can afford it or other such nonsense individual reasoning that doesn't take into account the whole picture.

And even then there is the more worrying analysis that reveals that our regulator Comreg isn't fit for purpose and is failing to objectively provide figures on Irish broadband and is inflating figures.
http://irelandoffline.org/2011/06/comreg-makes-up-stuff/

But no I'm sure it is all fine.

n97 mini

thebman wrote: »

So there is no problem but you have no evidence there is no problem and we should all go price a 1Gb link to see for ourselves?

I take it you just want to argue rather than get the price of a 1Gb link...

thebman

n97 mini wrote: »

I take it you just want to argue rather than get the price of a 1Gb link...

Your the one that brought up the price of a 1Gb link

Post the prices if it backs up your argument. I have posted evidence that we are not competitive so I think it is irrelevant anyway what the price you can get it for is as it is not competitive compared to other countries that we are competing with.

If you can't understand that then that is your problem not mine TBH.

Clareboy

" If I lose my job, I would do anything, I would sweep the streets ". I heard this remark this morning on the radio during an interview with a Talk Talk employee. It is incredible that an educated Irish person would speak like that in this day and age. Street sweeping jobs are good well paid public service positions. There are no vacancies for street sweepers! That guy can sweep the streets of Waterford for passtime if he so wishes.

ChRoMe

Clareboy wrote: »

" If I lose my job, I would do anything, I would sweep the streets ". I heard this remark this morning on the radio during an interview with a Talk Talk employee. It is incredible that an educated Irish person would speak like that in this day and age. Street sweeping jobs are good well paid public service positions. There are no vacancies for street sweepers! That guy can sweep the streets of Waterford for passtime if he so wishes.

Its the right attitude to have (cant tell if there are missing sarcasm tags for your post tbh)

honeyx

Jessibelle wrote: »

That's a seriously bad blow to the South-East They were one of the bigger employers in Waterford no?

Yeah it's terrible what happend, and our jobs in rigney dolphin gone in november so over 700 people looking for jobs.........................

thebman

honeyx wrote: »

Yeah it's terrible what happend, and our jobs in rigney dolphin gone in november so over 700 people looking for jobs.........................

Lot of opportunity to tap into that pool of people though if the right company was to startup.

Waterford needs an entrepreneur to grab it by the b*lls and stop waiting for the government to do something because it is quite obvious they can't do anything to help Waterford.

AlekSmart

thebman wrote: »

And even then there is the more worrying analysis that reveals that our regulator Comreg isn't fit for purpose and is failing to objectively provide figures on Irish broadband and is inflating figures.
http://irelandoffline.org/2011/06/comreg-makes-up-stuff/

Oh Dear,oh Dear,oh Dear...so what's this then...?

More evidence of yet another of a "NEW !" "IMPROVED !" Irish Regulatory System which,at it's most basic is unfit for purpose ?

Perhaps I am missing something here,but a common thread running through much of modern Irish Infrastructure is how our interpretation of "Regulation" turned out to be somewhat at odds with the rest-of-the-world's.

Finance,Health,Public Transport,Power,all excellent examples of the New Irish (Regulatory) Order....perhaps all we need now is a Political Regulator and we'll have it sorted...?