Tell us the hourly rate of public servants.

creedp

antoobrien wrote: »

Yeah but it's a matter of scale isn't it. With roughly 2/3 of the PS bill falling into the "lower" bracket, roughly 2/3 of all those savings will be from the lower paid.

It all depends how you analyse those figures, e.g. premium payments and OT are earned by both low and high paid people depending on the sector. It also depends how you define 'low paid' and 'high paid', e.g. this pay deal was based on the definition that a low paid person could be earning €64,999 while a high paid persons could be earning €65k. It would be useful to look as the distribution of the 'high paid' people. The majority will be under €100k while a tiny minority will be in excess of €150k. Again the devil is in the detail but that's something that is largely ignored.

antoobrien

creedp wrote: »

It all depends how you analyse those figures, e.g. premium payments and OT are earned by both low and high paid people depending on the sector. It also depends how you define 'low paid' and 'high paid', e.g. this pay deal was based on the definition that a low paid person could be earning €64,999 while a high paid persons could be earning €65k.

The problem with the definition of low vs high is that it is arbitrary. The most common definition is "do they earn more than me". It also depends on personal circumstances, e.g. I earn the average wage and I don't consider it low, but I don't have kids and a mortgage.

creedp wrote: »

It would be useful to look as the distribution of the 'high paid' people. The majority will be under €100k while a tiny minority will be in excess of €150k. Again the devil is in the detail but that's something that is largely ignored.

We're not ignoring the detail, it's just hard to find and analyse and it's often not worth the added work, especially when the figures are being used in an illustrative capacity.

[Jackass]

A lot of figures being thrown around here.

I would love to get data on the Mean and the Median office / clerical worker wage. I am talking about back office in various departments and services, not including front line service workers, and I would love to get their average wage from that.

That is the only part of the public sector that's a problem. The obscene administration costs. The knock on effect is terrible pay for essential and / or highly skilled services, such as doctors, nurses, teachers etc.

Croke Park III should involve outsourcing of administration to tender and all admin staff contracts switched to private contractor. That would sort it out pretty quickly and remove the nouse from around the countries neck.

Godge

[Jackass] wrote: »

A lot of figures being thrown around here.

I would love to get data on the Mean and the Median office / clerical worker wage. I am talking about back office in various departments and services, not including front line service workers, and I would love to get their average wage from that.

That is the only part of the public sector that's a problem. The obscene administration costs. The knock on effect is terrible pay for essential and / or highly skilled services, such as doctors, nurses, teachers etc.

Croke Park III should involve outsourcing of administration to tender and all admin staff contracts switched to private contractor. That would sort it out pretty quickly and remove the nouse from around the countries neck.

Do you mean finance, HR and buildings?

Or do you mean something more that that - clerical officers process your passport application, your social welfare payment, your revenue refund etc. Are they back or front-office in your opinion?

Do you have any clue of the number of people you are talking about and how much would be saved?

woodoo

[Jackass] wrote: »

That is the only part of the public sector that's a problem. The obscene administration costs. The knock on effect is terrible pay for essential and / or highly skilled services, such as doctors, nurses, teachers etc.

Doctors pay terrible you say??

[Jackass] wrote: »

Croke Park III should involve outsourcing of administration to tender and all admin staff contracts switched to private contractor. That would sort it out pretty quickly and remove the nouse from around the countries neck.

There isn't as many surplus admin staff as you may believe. Don't forget that the private sector would still need to make a profit on top of paying staff to do the work.

Do you have any idea of the savings outsourcing admin work would save?
Are you going to outsource secretaries and receptionists in hospitals and community services, what about planning offices, garda stations, schools. Maybe you want to outsource passport applications. Social welfare applications. Could you even out source HR i don't think that would work either.

What do other EU countries do?

AlexisM

One area where there is a strong perception of surplus admin/managers is in the HSE - that when all the healthboards were brought together, there were no staff savings, that hospitals are over-managed yet under-staffed in key areas. Does anyone have any figures on numbers of admin/managers in the HSE vs. medical people - and how this would compare to the UK or other EU countries?

[Jackass]

woodoo wrote: »

Doctors pay terrible you say??

Junior doctors earn less or around the same as many entry level clerical positions, around 30k - except they went to college for 7 odd years and have unsociable, long hours.

woodoo wrote: »

There isn't as many surplus admin staff as you may believe. Don't forget that the private sector would still need to make a profit on top of paying staff to do the work.

The private sector could make substantial profits and deliver the service at a fraction of the cost. It wouldn't be pretty, but contracts would largely be on a rolling basis for low skilled work, like call centres (why there isn't a localised call centre for civil service I have no idea), they would increase efficiency, i.e. not have one department where you write in to get something, get a letter back requesting you get documents from another government department, send that back, then get a letter out saying they require proof of x, y and z .... you could be writing to each other for a month before you get the thing done, private sector does that stuff over the phone and call into the office - you can do it on your lunch break (they remain open at lunch time, unlike some public sector offices). Have you ever tried getting someone on the phone in the public sector? They have so many departments that do the same thing, that if you do, they'll tell you to call that number (not transfer you) ... it's a complete mess, there's no structure, dealing with the public sector and seeing the mess it is to get something is just the tip of the iceberg... if they can't get a simple work flow in place, how do you think their business model is? I'd hazard a guess that the civil service could be more efficient, have agreed upon service level agreements with 95%+ accuracy with about one third of the staff and a quarter of the budget.

woodoo wrote: »

Do you have any idea of the savings outsourcing admin work would save?
Are you going to outsource secretaries and receptionists in hospitals and community services, what about planning offices, garda stations, schools. Maybe you want to outsource passport applications. Social welfare applications. Could you even out source HR i don't think that would work either.

What do other EU countries do?

Yes, yes and yes!!

Are you trying to tell me that it makes more sense to spend money training a garda for a few years, to have him sitting behind a desk taking statements from 4 kids, writing with a pencil on a sheet of paper, about witnessing a window being smashed or something?? While 3 or 4 other trained garda sit in reception reading about more garda stations being closed down due to cost?

Or that nurses with specialist skills should be playing receptionist and doing vast amounts of paperwork?

These above aren't just sensible, but they are also efficient - if you have structure in place for this to be done quickly and routinely by a dedicated admin team, then you will have more efficient and better service (such as policing) and could even do it at lower staff levels (as 25%+ gaurds are removed from behind desks, therefore 25% more are on the street, or nurses in the wards etc. - you could actually be overstaffed thanks to proper admin!!)

As for passport and welfare...you say it as though it's obsurd, like this is some high skilled, graduate students doing this work...how could those offices be any better an example of menial, basic run of the mill administration work that private sector could get done for 22k per head per annum and public sector do it ranging from 30k - 60k+

Human resourcing and recruitment also, everything! These drawn out, farsical recruitment processes they have, a recruitment professional would have the field narrowed to 10% of the applicants in a fraction of a second and hold interviews for suitable candidates only, no need for all of this over the top, mass renting of halls in the RDS to sit literacy exams etc....

I could write for hours and hours on this, and every single paragraph would be another way to save hundreds of thousands to the tax payer.

I, personally, as someone who has studied Economics, and therefore has an iota of a clue about efficiency, could save this country tens of millions if I could restructure parts of the civil service, and I'm an amature - imagine what someone with a clue could do! Hundreds of millions! The only difficult part would be removing the endemic inefficient culture and the protected by contract dead weight sucking the life out of this country, the whole package might take 25 years before it's streamlined as a result, wait them out, but the end result would be a world class, infinitely better service at a fraction of the cost civil service.

woodoo

[Jackass] wrote: »

Yes, yes and yes!!

Are you trying to tell me that it makes more sense to spend money training a garda for a few years, to have him sitting behind a desk taking statements from 4 kids, writing with a pencil on a sheet of paper, about witnessing a window being smashed or something?? While 3 or 4 other trained garda sit in reception reading about more garda stations being closed down due to cost?

Or that nurses with specialist skills should be playing receptionist and doing vast amounts of paperwork?

These above aren't just sensible, but they are also efficient - if you have structure in place for this to be done quickly and routinely by a dedicated admin team, then you will have more efficient and better service (such as policing) and could even do it at lower staff levels (as 25%+ gaurds are removed from behind desks, therefore 25% more are on the street, or nurses in the wards etc. - you could actually be overstaffed thanks to proper admin!!)

As for passport and welfare...you say it as though it's obsurd, like this is some high skilled, graduate students doing this work...how could those offices be any better an example of menial, basic run of the mill administration work that private sector could get done for 22k per head per annum and public sector do it ranging from 30k - 60k+
.

I never said anything about guards or nurses doing admin work. I think it would not be appropriate for private sector admin staff to be working in garda stations, or dealing with social welfare claims or passport applications or acting as secretaries for hospital consultants etc.

I do agree with you that some areas of the public and civil service are a disgrace when it comes to answering phones. That should improve.

HR doesn't just deal with recruitment btw. There is a lot of sensitive information in HR that i don't think should be in the hands of the private sector. Where i work HR dept works closely with management on a number of issues. How could you have a private company doing that.

Admin staff numbers are dropping. There has been no new hiring since about 2008. By the time CPA2 is over there will have been 8 years with no new admin staff. From what i can see they are all doing more and more work for less money. I don't see a necessity to outsource. They have outsourced some Home Help work and it is costing more. Hiring in private nursing staff is also costing more.

woodoo

[Jackass] wrote: »

As for passport and welfare...you say it as though it's obsurd, like this is some high skilled, graduate students doing this work...how could those offices be any better an example of menial, basic run of the mill administration work that private sector could get done for 22k per head per annum and public sector do it ranging from 30k - 60k+

Where are you getting your figures from. Basic admin starts at 22K in the public sector not 30K. And nobody is doing run of the mill admin on 60K.

sbsquarepants

woodoo wrote: »

I never said anything about guards or nurses doing admin work. I think it would not be appropriate for private sector admin staff to be working in garda stations, or dealing with social welfare claims or passport applications or acting as secretaries for hospital consultants etc.

Why not? It's admin, not rocket science.
I actually heard a doctor on the radio once claim that in his private practice he could see twice as many patients, with half the amount of staff and that the difference was down to mostly to admin and to a tiny tweak in working hours and even that was admin related (admin staff came in an hour or so early to prepare in advance instead of rocking up at the same time as 20 odd patients)
Actually that's another extremely simple thing that could help out - what commercially minded company ever invited 20 customers to it's premises and then basically just ignored them, only to deal with them 1 by 1 over the course of the day? That's madness

sarumite

woodoo wrote: »

I think it would not be appropriate for private sector admin staff to be working in garda stations, or dealing with social welfare claims or passport applications or acting as secretaries for hospital consultants etc.

Why not?

creedp

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Why not? It's admin, not rocket science.
I actually heard a doctor on the radio once claim that in his private practice he could see twice as many patients, with half the amount of staff and that the difference was down to mostly to admin and to a tiny tweak in working hours and even that was admin related (admin staff came in an hour or so early to prepare in advance instead of rocking up at the same time as 20 odd patients)
Actually that's another extremely simple thing that could help out - what commercially minded company ever invited 20 customers to it's premises and then basically just ignored them, only to deal with them 1 by 1 over the course of the day? That's madness

If it was his private practice then he could roster his staff whatever way suited him best .. so presumably he's talking about staff that he doesn't employ or pay. I was in a private hospital recently as an outpatient and lo and behold the same thing was happenning, i.e. I rushed in for my 8am 'appointment' to find at least a dozen people waiting for the same 'appointment. I could easily have attended an hour later and not have missed my 'appointment'. However, having said all that I think its wrong that appointments are scheduled in that way, be it public or private hospitals. Presumably its done so doctors valuable time is not wasted by no shows. A better way of doing it is to charge no shows and then maybe people might actually turn up as scheduled.

Head The Wall

woodoo wrote: »

I never said anything about guards or nurses doing admin work. I think it would not be appropriate for private sector admin staff to be working in garda stations, or dealing with social welfare claims or passport applications or acting as secretaries for hospital consultants etc.

I do agree with you that some areas of the public and civil service are a disgrace when it comes to answering phones. That should improve.

HR doesn't just deal with recruitment btw. There is a lot of sensitive information in HR that i don't think should be in the hands of the private sector. Where i work HR dept works closely with management on a number of issues. How could you have a private company doing that.

Admin staff numbers are dropping. There has been no new hiring since about 2008. By the time CPA2 is over there will have been 8 years with no new admin staff. From what i can see they are all doing more and more work for less money. I don't see a necessity to outsource. They have outsourced some Home Help work and it is costing more. Hiring in private nursing staff is also costing more.

Are you saying that the PS are the only people that can be trusted with sensitive data. I can also point you to numerous court cases where PS staff have advised that data.

I just see your post as a rant against overpaid paper pushers potentially losing out on their cushy jobs

Head The Wall

woodoo wrote: »

Where are you getting your figures from. Basic admin starts at 22K in the public sector not 30K. And nobody is doing run of the mill admin on 60K.

People starting now may be on that wage but considering there has been a hiring freeze there's probably very few on that scale. Most of the admin staff will have been there a few years at this stage on the old scale and will have been accruing increments so the poster is probably not far of the mark

Gumbo

Head The Wall wrote: »

People starting now may be on that wage but considering there has been a hiring freeze there's probably very few on that scale. Most of the admin staff will have been there a few years at this stage on the old scale and will have been accruing increments so the poster is probably not far of the mark

At 60k, he is way off the mark FFS, and you should know that :rolleyes:

Godge

[Jackass] wrote: »

Junior doctors earn less or around the same as many entry level clerical positions, around 30k - except they went to college for 7 odd years and have unsociable, long hours. .

Junior doctors earn 30k??????

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=21295

Maybe you look at the problem a bit deeper. In reality there are very few junior doctors taking home less than 100k a year.



[QUOTE='[Jackass];
The private sector could make substantial profits and deliver the service at a fraction of the cost. It wouldn't be pretty, but contracts would largely be on a rolling basis for low skilled work, like call centres (why there isn't a localised call centre for civil service I have no idea), they would increase efficiency, i.e. not have one department where you write in to get something, get a letter back requesting you get documents from another government department, send that back, then get a letter out saying they require proof of x, y and z .... you could be writing to each other for a month before you get the thing done, private sector does that stuff over the phone and call into the office - you can do it on your lunch break (they remain open at lunch time, unlike some public sector offices). Have you ever tried getting someone on the phone in the public sector? They have so many departments that do the same thing, that if you do, they'll tell you to call that number (not transfer you) ... it's a complete mess, there's no structure, dealing with the public sector and seeing the mess it is to get something is just the tip of the iceberg... if they can't get a simple work flow in place, how do you think their business model is? I'd hazard a guess that the civil service could be more efficient, have agreed upon service level agreements with 95%+ accuracy with about one third of the staff and a quarter of the budget. .[/QUOTE]


A generic rant, you could use the same rant to describe a customer's exprience with Eircom, eBay, Amazon, SKY, UPC, countless other private sector companies when the customer has a problem. Here is an experiment for you, try and ring a health insurance company about upgrading your policy and paying them more money. Ten minutes later, after they have taken your money, try ringning them about a claim you made three months ago that hasn't been resolved. After you are left hanging on the phone for two hours, transferred between seven different operators and accidentally cut-off twice, tell me how efficient they are (efficient at keeping their money, no doubt, efficient at giving it back to customers, less so).

Apart from that, you could go away and have a good read of the Data Protection Act, and find the limitations in sharing personal information. Then you will see that the biggest problem is not inefficient public sector processing of applications but EU directives on data protection.



[QUOTE='[Jackass];
Are you trying to tell me that it makes more sense to spend money training a garda for a few years, to have him sitting behind a desk taking statements from 4 kids, writing with a pencil on a sheet of paper, about witnessing a window being smashed or something?? While 3 or 4 other trained garda sit in reception reading about more garda stations being closed down due to cost? .[/QUOTE]

You seem to have plenty of experience about the internal workings of garda stations. Care to elaborate?

http://www.garda.ie/Controller.aspx?Page=164

http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/Civilianisation

Rather than relying on my own anecdotal observations of Garda activity while I was waiting to be questioned, I rely more on factual evidence. Maybe have a look at what has happened already before being more prescriptive.



[QUOTE='[Jackass];
Or that nurses with specialist skills should be playing receptionist and doing vast amounts of paperwork?

These above aren't just sensible, but they are also efficient - if you have structure in place for this to be done quickly and routinely by a dedicated admin team, then you will have more efficient and better service (such as policing) and could even do it at lower staff levels (as 25%+ gaurds are removed from behind desks, therefore 25% more are on the street, or nurses in the wards etc. - you could actually be overstaffed thanks to proper admin!!).[/QUOTE]


Nurses doing receptionist work? Where?

As for the paperwork, I would prefer that the nurse or doctor actually deciding that I need 25mg of Valium writes it down (or inputs it on the system) rather than the untrained clerical officer who might input 250g.

[QUOTE='[Jackass];
As for passport and welfare...you say it as though it's obsurd, like this is some high skilled, graduate students doing this work...how could those offices be any better an example of menial, basic run of the mill administration work that private sector could get done for 22k per head per annum and public sector do it ranging from 30k - 60k+.[/QUOTE]

Read the legislation underpinning passport office and welfare. Think of how many occasions over the years the private sector banks got their numbers and processing wrong and had to refund customers. Processing passports isn't only about speed and low cost, it is also about accuracy. How would the average "Jack-the-lad" feel as he arrived in Benidorm to discover that his passport with a commencement date of 1 Sept 2011 had an expiry date of 30 Aug 2010 because of a glitch by a low-cost private sector passport-processing organisation which meant he was deported at the start of his holiday?

If you want an example, just take a look at SUSI which as I understand it outsourced a lot of its paperwork and call centre answering to a private sector company and look where that got the poor students.

http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2012/1026/world/agency-hires-staff-to-tackle-student-grant-delay-212064.html

"Phone and email queries have been outsourced to a private company, which assesses student documents before forwarding completed applications to SUSI for decision and payment"

That is where the problems arose.

[QUOTE='[Jackass];
Human resourcing and recruitment also, everything! These drawn out, farsical recruitment processes they have, a recruitment professional would have the field narrowed to 10% of the applicants in a fraction of a second and hold interviews for suitable candidates only, no need for all of this over the top, mass renting of halls in the RDS to sit literacy exams etc....

I could write for hours and hours on this, and every single paragraph would be another way to save hundreds of thousands to the tax payer. .[/QUOTE]


The recruitment professional could narrow them down quickly all right, only people from my home country or only people who list rugby as an interest. The purpose of the literacy exams is to find people who can sit in garda stations and spell the word farcical while filling out forms:). Seriously, the recruitment process is designed to be fair and equitable and to avoid the private sector situation where the boss' son's girlfriend gets the job. The only people who seriously complain about the public sector recuitment process are those who fail to get through it. All independent reports have found it stands up as fair.

http://www.cpsa.ie/User_Uploads/Audit_Report_on_Senior_Recruitment_to_the_Civil_Service.pdf

Here is one for example.

I, [QUOTE='[Jackass];personally, as someone who has studied Economics, and therefore has an iota of a clue about efficiency, could save this country tens of millions if I could restructure parts of the civil service, and I'm an amature - imagine what someone with a clue could do! Hundreds of millions! The only difficult part would be removing the endemic inefficient culture and the protected by contract dead weight sucking the life out of this country, the whole package might take 25 years before it's streamlined as a result, wait them out, but the end result would be a world class, infinitely better service at a fraction of the cost civil service.[/QUOTE]

Most economists have predicted 17 of the last 3 recessions. The rest have predicted 8 of the last 0 upturns.

Congratulations on your training as an economist but training is only a beginning. Experience is at least as important and understanding organisational behaviour is very different from understanding supply and demand.

antoobrien

antoobrien wrote: »

Riskymove wrote: »

With roughly 2/3 of the PS bill falling into the "lower" bracket, roughly 2/3 of all those savings will be from the lower paid.

Yeah but it's a matter of scale isn't it. With roughly 2/3 of the PS bill falling into the "lower" bracket, roughly 2/3 of all those savings will be from the lower paid.

It seems I was a bit out with this guess, but I'm happy to correct it.

Brendan Howlin had an article in yesterday's indo, where he put forward his view on some items around the agreement that the thought needed clarifying. One thing he mentioned was that 13% of the PS workforce were on higher wages (presumably this is referring to the 65k+ bracket), so our 1 in 6 numbers are out by about 3.7%.

There are three points he makes about where savings are being made:

1. Less than €100m is being contributed from the overtime and twilight premium cuts.
2. Up to 70% of front-line workers don't do overtime.
3. 450m is coming from savings from the higher paid and the reduction of numbers.

the largest proportion (€450m) of the savings arising from the measures associated with the higher paid (13pc of the workforce) and through savings from reduced public service numbers, with less than €100m of the €1bn savings coming from the elimination of twilight pay and the reduction in Sunday or bank holiday premia. Up to as many as 70pc of those who work in frontline services, like nurses, do not do overtime.

It also busts the net argument that was made (can't remember if it was here or the other thread):

Net of the cost of concessions to the union side, the savings amount to €1bn.

Godge

antoobrien wrote: »

"Net of the cost of concessions to the union side, the savings amount to €1bn."

It also busts the net argument that was made (can't remember if it was here or the other thread):

I repeat the quotation above. I note that it says net of the cost of concessions. Where in the article or anywhere else is it said that the savings of €1 bn are net of the income tax, PRSI, USC, pension levy and superannuation lost by the State?

There is a gulf of a difference between the two net positions.

Going back to simple accountancy, you can have a profit net of deperciation but that figure may not mean much unless is a profit net of depreciation, bank interest and tax.

Same thing here, net of the cost of concessions bears no relationship to the previous discussion on net costs.

Head The Wall

kceire wrote: »

At 60k, he is way off the mark FFS, and you should know that :rolleyes:

I was obviously referencing the 30k claim which is true. Administrative officers can earn over 60k http://www.pseu.ie/html/payrates.html

woodoo

Godge wrote: »

Junior doctors earn 30k??????

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=21295

Maybe you look at the problem a bit deeper. In reality there are very few junior doctors taking home less than 100k a year.
.

They want to pretend basic admin staff are earning 60K and Doctors are earning 30K :rolleyes:

martian1980

Head The Wall wrote: »

I was obviously referencing the 30k claim which is true. Administrative officers can earn over 60k http://www.pseu.ie/html/payrates.html

You plainly don't know what administrative officer grade is. They certainly don't go around processing forms or working on public counters.

Godge

Head The Wall wrote: »

I was obviously referencing the 30k claim which is true. Administrative officers can earn over 60k http://www.pseu.ie/html/payrates.html

Administrative Officers are a policy formation grade, working mostly in the Departments of Finance and the Taoiseach, the last competition required a masters and looked for specialist economists.

But hey, don't let that stop you making inappropriate comparisons.

sock puppet

martian1980 wrote: »

You plainly don't know what administrative officer grade is. They certainly don't go around processing forms or working on public counters.

The starting salary anyway actually looks a little low for the type of people they're getting in.

barneystinson

Head The Wall wrote: »

I was obviously referencing the 30k claim which is true. Administrative officers can earn over 60k http://www.pseu.ie/html/payrates.html

Administrative officers don't perform "run of the mill administrative work" - they are middle management roles, an AO might be the clerical officer's line manager's line manager.

For example Revenue recently hired new AO's - AFAIK every single one of them with a minimum of one professional qualification - accountant, tax consultant or solicitor - many with 2 of the 3. Conducting Revenue audits, investigations, tax appeals etc is hardly run of the mill administrative work.

skafish

Leaving aside the old Public versus private rants, has anybody in the government actually looked at the real cost of the new proposals?

Howlin talks about saving €1b.

The effective tax rate for the PS is approx. 50%.

Net saving therefore €500 m

However, you also need to factor in the reduced spending that will come about as a result of these cuts. Most people still want to pay their morgage, and like to eat, so thee will be the last places where spending is reduced.

People affected by the cuts will do away with whatever luxury/impulse spending there is left(and in most cases that is already at apretty low level).

I'm not talking about new carpets or foreign holidays here.... I'm talking about the ice cream on the way home from a walk with the kids, or the accasional trip to the cinema.

This loss of spending will all affect small local business in towns across the country, resulting in shop closures and job losses in the very communities that can least afford to loose them.

Purely based on my own conversations with coleagues and a quick back of the envelope calculation, I reckon the net saving, initally, will be no mre than €2 to €300 million.

However, the associated loss of jobs will cost many multiples of this, from lost taxes etc and increased social welfare payments.

The solution to the current budget overrun is simple..... we need more people working in the real economy.
So when Eunach Kenny grows a pair and decides to sort out the black economy and reform the social welfare system, the deficit will almost disappear.




Not that that is likely anytime soon.

sock puppet

skafish wrote: »

Leaving aside the old Public versus private rants, has anybody in the government actually looked at the real cost of the new proposals?

Howlin talks about saving €1b.

The effective tax rate for the PS is approx. 50%.

Net saving therefore €500 m

However, you also need to factor in the reduced spending that will come about as a result of these cuts. Most people still want to pay their morgage, and like to eat, so thee will be the last places where spending is reduced.

People affected by the cuts will do away with whatever luxury/impulse spending there is left(and in most cases that is already at apretty low level).

I'm not talking about new carpets or foreign holidays here.... I'm talking about the ice cream on the way home from a walk with the kids, or the accasional trip to the cinema.

This loss of spending will all affect small local business in towns across the country, resulting in shop closures and job losses in the very communities that can least afford to loose them.

Purely based on my own conversations with coleagues and a quick back of the envelope calculation, I reckon the net saving, initally, will be no mre than €2 to €300 million.

However, the associated loss of jobs will cost many multiples of this, from lost taxes etc and increased social welfare payments.

The solution to the current budget overrun is simple..... we need more people working in the real economy.
So when Eunach Kenny grows a pair and decides to sort out the black economy and reform the social welfare system, the deficit will almost disappear.




Not that that is likely anytime soon.

To be fair, whatever people think about the damage casued by spending cuts, Ireland's underlying deficit fell in 2011 and 2012 and is expected to fall further this year. It seems like every interest out there group has claimed that any cuts affecting them would actually worsen the government's fiscal position.

skafish

sock puppet wrote: »

To be fair, whatever people think about the damage casued by spending cuts, Ireland's underlying deficit fell in 2011 and 2012 and is expected to fall further this year. It seems like every interest out there group has claimed that any cuts affecting them would actually worsen the government's fiscal position.

I'm not arguing your point. What I am trying to say is that taking large amounts of money out of already vulnerable communities is the worst possible course of action at this point in time.


Meantime, the social welfare gravy train rolls on, creating artifically high unemployment levels, and activley discouraging people from taking up jobs in the real economy, forcing those of us who make up the so called coping classes to suffer more and more cuts and standard of living reductions while the government sit by, lining their pockets as fast as they can, and do nothing to sort out the mess.

In fact, the government seem to be determined to make things worse, not better.....