ComReg pays staff bonuses despite State ban

harryr711

http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/comreg-pays-staff-bonuses-despite-state-ban-619900.html

ComReg pays staff bonuses despite State ban

Thursday, January 16, 2014 - 08:04 AM

It has emerged that Comreg has been paying out bonuses to staff at a time when they are banned in State agencies.

The telecoms regulator paid out three quarters of a million euro in remuneration "based on performance" in 2012 to some of its 125 employees.

€786,000 - which is 8% of staff costs - was "remuneration based on performance," the regulator said, amounting to an average of about €6,000 – €7,000 per employee.

A similar sum was also paid out the previous year.

The organisation said individual contracts included performance-based pay, and highlighted that its staff had been subject to all public sector pay cuts.

More of the same. Snouts in the trough. No personal responsibility. No professional integrity. No sense of civic duty. Those involved will sit there and wait for the whole thing to blow over, and then go out for a few pints and have a laugh about the whole thing. And it'll go on and on and on...

peckerhead

The Board of Irish Water are all set to receive performance bonuses for farming out €85 million worth of "consultancy" work to their buddies.

Are you surprised?

force eleven

Its never going to end. What's worse is the political leaders wringing their hands saying they wont interfere. We're the plebs, the working PAYE people who keep the show going. They love you for that. Keeps paying their bonuses.

Myrddin

Ah, something to take the eye off Irish Water...handy that

Daith

force eleven wrote: »

Its never going to end. What's worse is the political leaders wringing their hands saying they wont interfere. We're the plebs, the working PAYE people who keep the show going. They love you for that. Keeps paying their bonuses.

Can't do anything. Have contracts yadda yadds

Cuddlesworth

Daith wrote: »

Can't do anything. Have contracts yadda yadds

Actually they can, they can slash the budget to a fraction of what it was.

wendell borton

I think we need a stalinest like purge of the civil and public services.

KyussBishop

Pretty ridiculous given how incompetent ComReg are at actually enforcing regulations. One thing worth noting as well, is that salary + bonus levels in the public sector, get used as justification for padding similar salaries in the private sector as well; so there is a useful mutual benefit here, between public sector corruption and private sector inflation of executive/managerial wages (so within government, the public servants/workers promoting this kind of waste, also indirectly help out their mates in execute/managerial private sector positions).

So you see the bankers/financiers and whatnot padding their wages/bonuses to silly levels, as a 'reward' for tanking the economy (some of them even paying for it out of bailout money), here you see it within government as well - and government are so politically captured by a class of such corrupt interests, that the lines between corruption and lack of ethics in the public/private spheres, blur completely - they are one and the same, government backing and turning a blind eye to private sector corruption/unethical-actions, while doing much the same stuff themselves (many of them moving through the revolving-door between well paying positions in the private sector, and of government).

There's going to be no accountability for any of this, or any change, until the public creates pressure for it - and largely the public just don't seem to care enough about these issues.

marienbad

KyussBishop wrote: »

Pretty ridiculous given how incompetent ComReg are at actually enforcing regulations. One thing worth noting as well, is that salary + bonus levels in the public sector, get used as justification for padding similar salaries in the private sector as well; so there is a useful mutual benefit here, between public sector corruption and private sector inflation of executive/managerial wages (so within government, the public servants/workers promoting this kind of waste, also indirectly help out their mates in execute/managerial private sector positions).

I must say that was never my experience - the private sector does what it wants within the law as and when it can afford it ,And that is as diverse as is the sector itself.

Very little reference to the public sector at all. As a small example mileage allowance in the private sector was usually less than half the public sector. Maybe things have changed

KyussBishop

Excuse the host of ninja-edits there. The private sector, privileged parts of it anyway (like banking/finance in particular), are not held to account for breaking the law/regulations - they often are never investigated, as whistleblowers like Jonathan Sugarman have shown, or investigations are deliberately botched, as recent 'disappearing' documents seem to hint at.

Perceptions of corruption, both within business and government, are rife within the population really (for instance, one of the big ones you hear about within business is tax-cheating; not the legal kind either) - and you hear of this as if it's widepsread, for good reason - judging by how the government acts towards regulating/cracking-down on it, that backs the perception that it is widespread.

My point overall though, is that there is no divide between the public and private sector here, and many of the people who engage in stuff like this likely benefit from corruption in both the public and private spheres:
The corruption exists throughout both, and it is a class of people with the right influence (political and monetary), and the right contacts, and of course those who take advantage of what the government turns a blind eye to (both publicly and privately), who get away with all sorts of stuff like this.

BionicRasher

What would someone working in Comreg be getting a bonus for? Is it that they reach targets of promoting competition, protecting consumers and for encouraging innovation?

Reaching project targets is one thing or maybe an attendance bonus but 6-7K is a bit much and I dont think I have ever seen that amount in a bonus unless you were a top dog in sales etc