Forget privatising public services.......

Jawgap

.......mutualisation is the way to go

It sounds better than privatising and probably offers more advantages. Pity our politicians lack the brains, balls and imagination to try something similar here.

Pete_Cavan

Jawgap wrote: »

.......mutualisation is the way to go

Eventually other government bodies such as the Land Registry and the Office for National Statistics could also become candidates for mutualisation, although government sources stressed that these were not under consideration at present.

These seem like odd government bodies to do this with. They are not selling a product or service, merely collecting and recording information and making it available to the general public. From the states point of view, there probably are cost savings to be made by increasing efficiency and productivity but if there is no potential to make profit, what incentive is there for a private company to get involved?

Something needs to be done about our state companies, just look at the situation with Bus Eireann; potential annual losses of more than €11 million and yet staff get double time on Sundays, clerical and executive staff only work 36 hours a week and 4 days self-certified sick leave each year! The tax payer should not be expected to subsidise the company while these type of work practices exist.

Suryavarman

Pete_Cavan wrote: »

These seem like odd government bodies to do this with. They are not selling a product or service, merely collecting and recording information and making it available to the general public. From the states point of view, there probably are cost savings to be made by increasing efficiency and productivity but if there is no potential to make profit, what incentive is there for a private company to get involved?

As much of a fan of privatising government services as I am. I can't really see the sense of privatising these services either.

It's not like electricity or rail privatisation where every person in the country is a potential customer. The only possible customer is the government. There is no incentive for people to set up competing companies and therefore no incentive for the privatised company to keep prices down.

I'm completely baffled as to how this would work.

Jawgap

In the case of the Land Registry - it's just information handling, storage and retrieval they are engaged in - along with archiving of paper documents. Either they could take in work (for example from banks etc) or the state could contract out the service to a specialist provider.

Similarly with the CSO, they could use their undoubted statistical and analytical skills to service the market.

Whether something can be privatised or mutualised depends on how you view the service provided and how you define the market they are in.......

.......apart from defence, policing, regulation, justice and some aspects of education and health, there is probably very little in the way of services that the state couldn't divest itself of.

I agree, though, that certain assets (tranmission grids, land, art already owned by the state, heritage buildings etc) should remain in state ownership, even if the actual operation of them is handled by some form of private entity.