PS pay wont be Cut.

Brian Lenihan is of course being disingenuous when he refers to the Croke Park agreement being " broadened and deepened " in terms of safeguarding pay - anything not currently in the agreement will have to be negotiated with the Unions.

NinjaTruncs wrote: »

they could start by freezing increments.

Are you saying that increments are still being paid as we speak ? :mad:
Oh FFS we really are doomed, doomed I tell ya.

changes wrote: »

Its only right there should be no paycuts they only made the agreement less than a year ago.

Savings from the PS can be made by the croke park agreement, natural wastage and vol redundancies.

They will just have to look harder for savings elsewhere.

Yeah it's not as if public sector pay is such a big precentage of the overall public spend, now is it ? :rolleyes:

Shure can't they cut carers allowances, mental health budget and special needs childrens benefits ?
It's not as if they have overpaid union reps to fight their case now is it ?
So who cares about them. :mad:

The minister also says that some departments haven't been playing ball and he's had to write to them to speed it up.

Oooohhhh, the Minister wrote to us! they'll be laughing in the civil service.

The croke park agreement was the carrot, but what's the stick to fellas who had their bonuses retained as 'basic salary' when the last round of cuts were rolling around?

Individual lower paid public servants aren't the problem here, I feel. It's their eejit managers, who drink in the same watering holes as our politicians.

Riskymove wrote: »

welfare is a bigger proportion of the spend than PS pay bill..something has to be done there.....unpalatable as some of the actions will be....there has already been a few billion shaved off the PS bill...

Oh don't worry I would cut that as well.
Although I would not cut people who have just arrived on dole unlike those that have been on it longer than 3 years.
For those who couldn't be ar**ed getting a job during our boom then they don't deserve dole.

changes wrote: »

Their your words not mine. They could introduce a wealth tax, find out who benefited from all the land sales over the boom and tax them hard.

Ah yes tax the rich and everything will be fine. :rolleyes:
Rather than just tax I would happy if they clsoed the loopholes that allowed people do some very creative accounting to avoid taxes.

changes wrote: »

Ask Mr Q. for that 2.7 billion he owes.

Don't pay all the Anglo money, tough luck to the many who took risks with them. What are we afraid of, someone will lend us money it might be at a higher interest rate but we could pay alot of interest if we saved the 24 billion from the anglo hole.

I presume you mean derek quinlan who legged it to Switzerland to avoid paying for HIS mistakes.
He owes that money to banks & NAMA which are now owned by us the citizens, so yes indeed he should be paying it back.

Likewise all the other debtors should be forced to pay back their loans and if they can't pay these debts through their companies then everything they have siphoned off, either offshore or to family members should be taken off them.

But stop using the banking debts to hide behind, as is typical of public sector employees and their unions.
Even without our banking debts we are spending nearly 20 billion a year, that is 20 billion we don't have and have to borrow on public spending.

That means without ever bringing banks into it we have to cut our spending and raise taxes to decrease that 20 billion annual deficit.

Now a huge chunk of that 20 billion is spent on public sector wages and social welfare.
Saying these are immune from cuts means that severe cuts have to made elsewhere and workers (private and public) taxes have to increase drastically to keep certain protected sectors in a lifestyle they have become accustomed to during our boom.

Riskymove wrote: »

and if we fire half the psychiatric nurses and special needs asistants?

I would cut their salaries rather than fire anyone in those areas since they are probably understaffed as is.

They will not fire people, they just will not replace those that leave and hence care for the mentally ill and the special needs kids will drop to an even worse level.

This leads me onto point that it is no use claiming we will bring numbers down by natural wastage and people leaving of their own accord, since this disproportionately affects front line sevices and not the hugely bureaucratic overstaffed back end.

Jaysoose wrote: »

two very different things in my eyes.

tell that to the bank manager or the school looking for money or ....etc

bottom line is that PS have had their incomes reduced and will also face the same tax changes that everyone else will

Jaysoose wrote: »

They are seeing staff reduction in the sense that the contract staff that were brought in to do the lions share of the work are not being renewed and the public servants are finding themselves in the weird scenario where they actually have to do the work they should have been doing originally.

thats not the case across the PS as a whole...and is a perfect example of the nonsense generalisations that occur in these threads...if all you want to do is have a rant then there is a forum for that

contract work is predominantly in certain areas...for example there are a few thousand less civil servants (permanent) than there were.....workloads are the same or higher