Sinn Fein - looming health service disaster?

Quin_Dub wrote: »

It's not salaries that are out of control per se - It's the value we get for those salaries that's the problem..

That's solved by standing up to the unions and enforcing a meritocracy, Enabling targeted redundancies aka Getting rid of the dead-wood and the wasters.

Implementing proper systems of measurement and reward to ensure that people are earning their money and not just gliding on by..

If anything , proper Salary structures with performance related pay rises and bonus will actual help to reduce overall costs and drive increased value for money...

Simply telling everybody, good or bad that their salary is now locked to a specific value is counter-productive..

The good people will be de-motivated and either stay, but slide into mediocrity or they simply leave..

The crap people will dig in like a tick , continue to be **** and be thrilled to be getting a salary for doing a below average job...

I personally believe that free for all's in salaries are what is counterproductive. There has to be some limit, perhaps not mine, but some realistic and fair ceiling has to be introduced. And nobody should be in work and find it hard to exist. That is an unequal society I cannot stand over and I don't think and would never support a political party who would either.
They are depriving the services these people are working in of resources. Resources, you me and everybody else needs.
It's a bit like allowing a lecturer to believe that the college is there to serve their needs and not the other way around.

Happyman42 wrote: »

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Inequality in salaries is best addressed through a progressive income taxation system, which we have at the moment.

Personally, I don't think salaries or income tax are the problem. There is too much focus on them.

In the wider economy, it is the concentration of wealth that is the issue. Family businesses passed down with exemptions from inheritance tax are one of the biggest obstacles to new entrant businesses and new ideas. The whole regime of CGT and CAT needs a further examination.

At the moment we tax heavily, through high income tax, the process of creating wealth yet we tax lightly, through low CAT and low property taxes, the possession of wealth. This balance needs to be addressed through lower marginal income tax rates (and in particular reducing the top rate of taxation) and eliminating capital tax exemptions.

Permabear wrote: »

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One of the problems we have is that we don't pay enough at the top of the public sector - the rate for the CEO of Irish Water is one example where we set the salary too low. SF will compound this problem, leaving us in four or five years with a very incompetent public service.

There is a pension issue with the current pension scheme with high salaries in the public sector but this can be addressed with split salary arrangements, only say the first €100k is pensionable, the rest of the salary is not. This could be a way of saving face for SF, it caps a public service pension at €50k for the high earners (which is a long-term expenditure saving) and is a 100k cap of sorts but also allows the public service to retain and attract top talent.

maccored wrote: »

didnt this line of talk start earlier in the thread when it was mentioned SF had proposed PUBLIC SECTOR limits on pay? There was no mention of private sector pay caps.

This is just another talking in circles thread.

No, it is just another thread examining and parsing the technical details of SF's mad economic policies, sometimes pointing out changes to make them work, or sometimes pointing out that they will never work.

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

If someone is working as a waitress on minimum wage you are advocating raising that minimum wage until that person is earning circa 40k per year. How many customers do you think that cafe/restaurant will have when they have to charge €15 for a coffee or €25 for a ham sandwich to cover these wages?

Did you miss the bit where I said what should happen in the private sector? :rolleyes:

I reckon all this poll support for SF is extremely soft indeed. As much as I absolutely detest this current government for the negative feeling that has pervaded society since they got elected into office, for the feeling that this government now micromanages all aspects of your life and in particular your income, I detest them for all the vulnerabilities they have I suspect deliberately allowed to emerge in our society, where the most fundamental human needs such as basic income, water and in particular housing, are now treated as luxuries of some sort where the exorbitant costs of same are now ruthlessly extracted from you now under this government under threat of homelessness, conviction (if you do not pay water charges, or property tax, etc), eviction, (if you are a homeowner in mortgage arrears, etc).

As much as I detest all of this, there can be no doubt that we are in a much better place today, than we were in when this government first took office. People are starting to spend again, the dread of 5,000 people losing their jobs a month, and more, is not happening today, possibly in spite of, rather than because of, any specific actions taken by this government.

Things are at long last on the up after the toughest few years that I have personally ever been through as a small business owner still in my 30's and some of the policies this government have enabled this change, as much as I hate to admit that.

After having been through all of this, the last thing I'll be doing is voting for a crowd of nordy chancers who know nothing about running a real world economy. Northern Ireland as an economy is some sort of parallel economic universe where 30% of workers are employed by a bloated civil service/public sector and a massive transfer of monetary funds is required every year from Westminister to Northern Ireland, to keep the province solvent.

I personally do not wish to ever see the state I live in being administered by an organisation whose natural home is in Belfast, life up there is not the same as life down here.

The taxation policies of SF are simply insane, we are already taxing people at 41% once they earn over 38,500 Euro I think it is, if we need to do anything with this, we need to let people earn more before they hit this higher rate. The more people earn, once they are not being bled try through the taxation system, in general, the more they will spend in the economy. SF want to penalise hard work and decent pay in the name of some whacky Communist idealogy where anything more than 70K a year is seen as being a threat to society.

I reckon SF are in for a rude awakening come the next election, we've come through too much to let this cult type ideology into government where they can open up a new taxation front on people who in all reality need a break.

For the avoidance of doubt, I don't have any political affiliations whatsoever.

Godge wrote: »

2012 article from the indo - your favourite newspaper, comparing us with one country and not an independent report or statistic to be seen.

You expect me to believe that?

Tell me which figures you dispute and I'll get back to you. I have already checked, it being the Sindo.

I'm listening to a lad here being interviewed by Pat Kenny, some guy who is alleging he was raped by an IRA man and just like the last person who alleged that she was raped by an IRA member, and just like how we have seen the Catholic Church operate over the last 30 odd years, the primary exercise was to cover up the whole matter and shunt people around the place and to basically protect alleged offenders not even from prosecution but from proper investigation.

How anyone can think that this kind of carry on can be compatible with running a country, or as the OP questions, to run a health service, is just a mystery to me.

I considered voting for SF as I couldn't in all consciousness vote for FF again and not for FG or Labour on the next occasion, but as I listen to the radio here and some guy from Louth is airing his grievances on the national airwaves, whether his allegations be true or not and I'm not to know one way or the other, but no party with allegations like this hanging over them and this kind of stuff being sorted out on the national airwaves, would have any time or headspace left to run a health service or an economy for that matter.