Ah yes, because then the highest trained workers in the state with the most mobile qualifications will definitely hang around instead of going where their jobs are properly looked after.nn

Let them off, do you think some consultant or HSE PR hack will get paid a fraction of what s/he is currently on in any other European State?, Consultants can go on contract to an arab state or into the private sector in the US, and possibly earn similar money but is there any other 100K plus public servant that could get paid that kind of money instantly somewhere else, your point seem to suggest they are the ones doing the country a favor providing us their unique skill for a song and if they got a penny less they would be gone. RTE senior pay, where would they get what they are on now? Of course its not just people directly employed by the State, 2 billion budget for professional fees in NAMA is surely insulating our very fine lawyers, accountants and consultants from reality.

Where the pay is less for consultants, it is balanced by superior conditions and lifestyle. Drop the pay and they will leave for greener pastures. nnSame for any profession -it’s why there’s a crisis in retaining junior docs in the HSE.

Junior Docs are not overpaid like consultants. Eoghan just confirm the pay of consultants in Irleand versus same in UK and Germany. Facts do not sit with your position.

Where would an ESB worker (average pay 80,000 with further recent pay rise, check it for yourself) get that?
British Gas, I know they are “semi-state” but they are paid from the public granted monopoly of the grid, defended by the same unions and we all pay higher prices to cover their salaries. I suppose they could get that kind of money for working for an electricity company anywhere else as well.

Consultants in UK have more transparent career progression, better conditions, and more coherent system in which to work. Headline grabbing direct pay is not the only factor to compare.

That’s very true Eoghan, but I don’t see a lot of consultants clamoring to reform the system.

Eoghan, Consultants in the UK are paid a fraction of their counterparts in Ireland. Your really stretching your argument to extremes with “career progression” ….At the end of the day consultants want cash because as is stated theyre is nothing stopping them from going to the uk and work for a fraction of their Irish Salary.

The divide is not created by peoples comments Patrick the divide is obviously created by the fact that one person works for a wage and pays tax in the private sector, the person in the public sector does the same job and is paid alot more ( pensions and benefits included) and is paid from the private sectors tax and borrowed money. Thats the divide and acknowledging it has nothing to do with its creation. If you are not in favour of a divide as your comment suggests you should revoke the CP agreement and let people be paid a fair wage from a sustainable source, like everyone in the private sector if you want to earn more its up to you and there are lots of options but no entitlement to a large salary and guaranteed pension from an insolvent state. Even if you feel it is a just entitlement, the arithmetic of the states finances is at odds with such a view.

To be clear not everyone in the public service is overpaid but many are particularly at higher pay grades, positions with no accountability, higher wages, better conditions and guaranteed pensions all paid for by an insolvent state. Its an argument that has no credibility.

The European comparison is inaccurate.The average is driven up by the bloated top servants.
Cost of living here is high also.

I seem to recall, and I think this was re-Croke Park, that when all the public servants took one of their pay-cuts Brian Cowen came out and said that it wouldn’t apply to people earning over €100,000 ‘cos they were counting on that money

Can’t remember the details but it really illustrated for me that “public sector workers” aren’t really a class you can discuss in absolute terms since it applies to so many different types of people. The “average” salary is meaningless, because the average worker doesn’t get anything close to it

The generous pay and conditions afforded to public sector workers keeps the cost of living high for all of us.

This is just another example of the government using tax income to buy votes. Unfortunately many in the public sector don’t join up the dots and think about what’s really happening – higher pay -> higher costs. In real terms we could all be better off if these costs were reduced.

Yes. They must lead.

don’t think post office falls under it

Yea i think the guys that own the post office do so privately….just the postmen are public servents

Way to attack frontline public sector workers with private sector inefficiencies!

Really? Where do I apply for that job??

You have to wait for the next election

Well said, the gravy charter is a disgrace , it a ruse to protect the higher paid civil and public servants by tying them up with the lower paid and frontline services all of course supported by the overpaid union fat cats

It is absolutely sickening that the Union leaders and the Government wrote the Croke Park deal in such a way that if you cut the wages of the Top Earners (like Politicians and CEOs) then all the Unions will strike,
The vast majority of the workers in the Public sector are earning less than 40k per year.
The median of the wages is what brings it up to 56k per year.
I think the Government must do an education piece with the regular public sector workers, tell them that they are cutting the salaries of all those earning over 40k to an appropriate level, and ask the Union members to reject and proposed strike action in response from their Union leaders.

Should have said average, not median. The median wage in the public sector is circa 45k, while the average is 56k

Agreed. The pay of senior people in civil service and other parts of the public sector is the biggest stumbling block that Ireland faces when trying to recover.
It annoys people abroad that we must negotiate with.
It sets up a bench mark such that people on lower pay feel bad about. Moral will never recover until politicians and senior civil servants bit the bullet and take serious reductions.
Living it alone is the opposite of leadership.

How can any National State who borrows over a 1/3 of its annual expenditure each year, pay public servants multiples of what the person performing the same function is paid in the State’s that are lending the money? It is obsence, people who do valuable work for the state deserve to get a wage commensurate with the value of the work they offer in return, they deserve to be paid enough to have a decent standard of living, if they want to be very wealthy they have every right to pursue such ambitions in the private sector but no such right to believe the state particularly an insolvent one owes them such largesse. All the lark about protecting the vulnerable, if they want to protect the most vulnerable they cut the salaries as the top before the cut the services at the bottom.Is there anyone not personally or indirectly benefiting financially from the public pay gravy train that can defend Croke Park on logic or arithmetic, its as unjust as it is unsustainable.

Yes certainly
It was no different from a property developer moving assets after he knew he was bust.

@ Economicopoly. You speak about the ‘largess ‘ enjoyed by public servants. Most public servants earn less than the average industrial wage (about 70% of them in fact), and 40% of those earn less than €20,000 per annum. You also refer to them only being paid enough to have a decent standard of living. If you take, for example, that the average industrai wage can provide an average standard of living, then you would have to INCREASE the wages of most public servants.

Please do your homework, or at least distinguish between low paid and higher paid workers. Don’t be a tool of the people trying to divide and conquer ordinary workers.

Your homework
“Most public servants earn less than the average industrial wage (about 70% of them in fact), and 40% of those earn less than €20,000 per annum”.
We can all make up figures if this is the case where is the confirmation of such information, are you including all benefits and guaranteed pensions?
Its obvious that not every public sector worker is overpaid and I have acknowledged that. To those that aren’t overpaid or in need of an increase to have a decent standard of living they should get it obviously, but a lot are completely overpaid and in an insolvent state its unjust and unsustainable. Check the rates of pay for medical consultants in Ireland and the UK, or Ireland and Germany , its literally a fraction of the rate in Ireland yet we borrow money from them to pay it, Croke park cannot be defended if you want to do it with an argument based on facts or fairness.

TooTrue
“Don’t be a tool of the people trying to divide and conquer ordinary workers”.

The CP agreement you support has divided and conquered “ordinary workers”. One “ordinary worker” has no job security, is accountable for duties under threat of dismissal, has no guaranteed pension, has inferior benefits and has lower wages but is payed from private enterprise and pays tax to the state pot.

The other ‘ordinary worker” has job security, is not accountable for their duties under threat of dismissal, has a guaranteed pension, has additional benefits and higher wages.

I acknowlege not all Public sector workers are overpaid relative to costs of living but sadly even lower public sector workers are overpaid relative to their private sector counterparts.

Take all the facts on pay of an entry grade civil servant versus an entry level secretary or admin post in a private firm. Leaving the fact that the inequality is achieved with borrowed money aside , this divide of ‘ordinary workers” is already well established there and certainly not caused by any comments acknowledging same.

Ah, right, so you ARE one of the divide and conquer brigade. Love the old chestnut of taking a single example of like for like pay to back up your waffle. I’m public sector and would LOVE to earn what my counterparts in the private sector are earning. My brother had to leave his public sector nursing job to work as a private sector nurse because, since the 15% pay cut, he could no longer meet his mortgage and bills.

Real people, real examples. Not your little cherrypicked non-example of like for like without figures to back it up or this simple arithmetic you keep mentioning but fail to display.

Did your brother include his pension when he was doing his calculations?

btw lest my question be misinterpreted – I do always think it’s a bad idea to talk about nurses, guards, low paid clerical workers in the public sector etc in these discussions. As suggested by your comments above, we should be looking at the real wasteful areas: reform of the HSE, consultants pay etc.

Yep. But when push comes to shove, keeping a roof over your head today has to take priority over a pension in 20 years time.

TooTrue

How is my example in any way inadequate to your “real” example?
If you can show facts to the contrary of what I have said, fair play but all respect to your brother its hardly a ‘real” example. Ignore the endless data which abounds highlighting the excessive pay to much of the public sector, do you believe that the fact that the govt can’t pay its bill and the public sector paybill being what it is have any connection? I have acknowledged that not everyone is on a gravy train but many are. Your argument is regardless of the fact the state is insolvent and is borrowing 1/3 of its expenditure from countires with lower public pay rates, Croke park pay rates must remain. All you can do is attack me but not attack the argument with any credibility or facts.

Actually, its yourself that keeps regurgitating the words ‘simple arithmetic’ but haven’t actually provided any figures. All mouth, no trousers.

@too true left , please stop your nonsense , all comparisons With private sector are null and void cause ,if you worked on that sector you would now be unemployed because your employer would be broke , there is no esm for private companies and please folks don’t talk banks they are a law unto themselves , they represent nobody , probably with statutory redundancy and you be lucky that if you had a pension that it still worth anything, grow up get in the real world , Europe is falling down around our ears you should be begging for pay cut so that you might still have your job and pension next year

We got the pay cut tensing, 15% pay cut. We then waited for the tax increase on high earners to come, so we could all shoulder the burden. We’re still waiting, 4 years into the crisis.

The simple arithmetic is the fact that the government cannot pay the states costs with the states income.
Your position is that regardless of the fact the state has to borrow every year to keep paying its current rate of expenditure, the croke park deal should not be changed. The simple arithmetic is that the money is not there to keep paying for it and they can’t keep borrowing from states who have lower public sector costs to pay higher ones in Ireland. Thats the simple arithmetic. “All mouth no Trousers” only serves to highlight the futility of your argument.

Well said Mel – increments when the country is bloody bankrupt???? How crazy can it get?

There’s near €700m getting paid out in unsecured bonds this week. But yeah, let teachers pay for cuts to Special Needs Assistants. If they deliver our children’s education sure they might as well fund it too.

Thats correct Mel.
Trade unions are spineless these days,and represent management more than the common worker.

Hey Mr Nail meet Mr Hammer!

Absolutely spot on Mel. It amazes me that those screaming about protecting front line services cannot grasp that the CPA is the biggest threat to the existence of these services.

Partner is a teacher, bloody hard job. I wouldn’t do it. One thing that is oft not mentioned is that teachers have to spend an awful lot of their own money developing resources etc.

but your post does fulfill an important requirement. If the Govt. cannot set the teacher against the office admin. Then they both might start asking why did Brian Lenihan exempt the top several hundred civil servants from pay cuts, why were cuts not deeper in the top third were the wages are obscenely outline with other counties like us.

The cuts need to be in the people on 50k up, this also needs to apply to the private sector. The wages that are being demanded in professional services are still outrageous. If you do not have a unique and high demand skill set, then it is really hard to justify a salary of more than 50k in Ireland. Really, really hard.

That is where the cuts must come, private and public.

5 months paid holidays a year, awful tough job that. I know loads of teachers and they are laughing at the rest of us.

Martin if it’s so great, what steps did you take to become a teacher?

Lots of people like to bash teachers, nurses and gardai but I didn’t see too many people beating down the doors in 2005

Principals and Deputy-Principals are paid management allowances to take on this extra work. The same applies to Posts of Responsibility.Is anybody seriously saying that they should do this work for no extra pay.This money is described as an allowance for historical reasons.

The argument that if you didn’t choose to become a teacher, then you should not criticise their pay and conditions is pretty lame. We (tax payers) are paying for this. Do we not have a right to question the service that we’re receiving?

@ censored.

Question away. The huge majority of the 60,000 teachers in this country are doing a very good job. Now que the spurious holidays argument, the “I know this teacher who did such and such and that means all teachers are the same” arguments.

The huge majority of teachers are doing a very good job. How do you know?

As for the allowances comment above, why do they receive extra allowances to perform duties that any reasonable person would see as being part of the job? By all means pay them properly, but these allowances are a bad system.

@ censored

We know that the majority of teachers are doing a good job due to the various OECD reports which praise the work of Irish teachers, the fact that Irish teachers can get jobs anywhere in the world, that international agencies actively recruit in Irish universities to attract Irish newly qualified teachers to work in their countries.

Regarding allowances, teachers get can get a number of “allowances”. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the term allowance as it is mainly a historical term used to calculate the make up of a teacher’s salary. The allowances refer to part of a teacher’s salary which is given on the grade of qualification they achieved during their training (otherwise known as qualification allowances). Some “allowances” are actually pay increases for promotion to posts which the teachers undertakes extra responsibility, such as organising the schools examinations, being a programmes (Transition Year, LCA, LCVP etc..) co-ordinator. Assistant Principals “allowance” is a pay increase for taking on a Year Head position (generally) or another what could be called a “middle-management” function in the school. As it involves a significant increase in workload and responsibility, it is granted a pay increase. You can also have a Deputy Principal’s or Principal’s Allowance. These are self explanatory. I would argue that none of these should actually be called “allowances” as this implies some form of benevolence in their giving. They are a part of salary. The majority of teachers who were hired since 2004 will never see opportunities for posts of responsibility due to the moratorium and embargo on promotions. Some other allowances are given for teaching in a Gaeltacht or on an island, teaching children who are blind, deaf, mentally or physically handicapped etc.

I think you need to check those OECD reports again, and try reading them this time.

@ Censored

Have read, studied and presented findings on the same reports. While the OECD reports acknowledge that there are certain aspects that teachers need to improve on, they criticise the system first and foremost for not allowing teachers to improve their work, mainly down to the fact that despite our longer holidays, Irish teachers actually spend more time teaching per annum than our counterparts. This is where the OECD recommends that improvement in Irish teaching begins.Teachers are open to a huge amount of scrutiny. There are inspections from the DES on a number of fronts (subject, department, programme, whole-school and incidental inspections), all of which are available from the DES website. More often than not, the performance of teachers is commended. Of course, examination results provide another form of scrutiny for teachers. Parents can query the practices of teachers if they so wish. The Teaching Council is also another vehicle by which the performance of teachers can be scrutinised. None of the above slate the work of the majority of teachers in this country, hence why I can say with confidence that despite the increasing problems in both society and education, teachers are for the most part doing a good job.

So, what would you have the teachers do? Teach empty classrooms in July?

Nope, not just in July. In all months of the year after an complete overhaul of education. No point having set holidays – they could be staggered throughout the year for the kids, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a bit of variation. Provide major savings if implemented correctly over the course of five years.

I agree.
I work frontline in the public sector.
My pay has been cut.I dont get expenses,overtime,lunchbreaks etc.There has been an aggressive media campaign at the behest of groups like IBEC to savage and slander the public sector footsoldier.
Can anyone give a figure as to how much the person at the top of the Health Service,James O Reilly costs-including “advisors” and expenses etc?
I said from day one this is a bad deal for the average worker.We have changed rosters and work practices for efficiency purposes while those at the top seem to be living it up.

Robbie I feel your pain, I’ve been private sector since I started working and have never received any of the above benefits but unlike you I have no pension at retirement either. I genuinely didn’t realise that there were public sector staff that were not entitled to them benefits! I must admit that of the public sector I only personally know Gardai and they receive enough allowances to make your head spin!

I know some guys in the army & navy who go away for days on end without getting a penny in overtime – the concept just doesn’t exist to them. They do get overseas money when they go away for 6 months or whatever but it comes from the UN, not Ireland.

As I said above, not all public sector workers have the same conditions, there’s huge variety

the thousands that would not take the jobs during the book because the jobs paid to little

What about frontline services? You can’t just pick people out of the dole and make ten a Garda, fireman, nurse, paramedic, teacher. There’s a lot of training involved before people get these jobs.

Seanbeg I don’t for a second think that people would actually continue with the strike if they realised that their jobs were in jeopardy! It’s only with the power of the unions and the knowledge that it is practically impossible to be removed from a job in the public/civil service that makes striking such an easy choice! Also nobody is calling for cuts in frontline staff, it’s the upper echelons that are too protected by this ‘agreement’!

Seanbeag I honestly don’t think people will argue that the frontline services can be replaced like that or would advocate that to happen. However the public service contains layers of administrative staff that could be easily streamlined and the resources then diverted to the much vaunted Front line services. In this day and age people should not have a job or wage just because that’s the way it was done in the past.

At the moment all that seems to have been done is a cosmetic exercise. The government need to do what they were elected to do and that is to make the painful and difficult decisions to ensure our children have some kind of future and not pander to a section of the community at the expense of the common good.

The Unions used prices in a credit inflated economy to argue for unprecedented colassal rises in public pay, as this was considered politically advantageous, Bertie Ahern had the state keep paying them more and more, further benefits further rises in pensions…. The credit fueled economy and its associated high prices have collapsed but the public service rates are just marginally less than they were at the height of the credit fueled charade, yet the Unions deny the converse of the argument they used to justify such colossal rises in pay and are apparently claiming that they ought to be paid significiantly more than the private sector pays its staff, its an argument utterly devoid of credibility and even more so in an insolvent state that is borrowing the money (from countries who pay their public service alot less) to keep overpaying them. Only in a crooked political state like Ireland could this nonsense prevail, its embarrassing. Look at pensions alone, people in the private sector are lucky to have a wage, a pension of money for retirement is a far off dream for millions of private workers yet on top of higher wages the public service have guaranteed pensions from an insolvent state!! Is there anyone voting for croke park that is not financially benefiting from it.

Do you think PS workers in Ireland would have become the best paid in Europe without the hard work and taxes of those in the private sector?
Those private sector workers (that are lucky to still have a job) have the right to moan when they face the fear of redundancy or pay cuts every day while others are insulated from it all.
If your union was to try the “screw you for becoming an engineer or or a carpenter or a retail worker etc and paying those taxes” argument then lets see how public support for the CPA would fare.

Do you think private sector workers would have gotten any job at all without being delivered by evil consultants, taught by greedy teachers and protected by lazy gardai? nnFrontline piblic sector workers have been hit with direct and indirect cuts in many cases far and away exceeding anything seen by private sector workers. nnThe lunatic notion that there should be war declared between sectors, a concept pushed by those with an agenda that benefits workers in neither camp, is damaging and simpleminded.

Eoghan, the “we’re all in this together” stuff does not ring true when it’s the private sector workers being laid off and seeing any chance of a pension disappear. There really are 2 Irelands out there.

But in the end its a numbers game. The PS pay and pensions bill is being funded by massive levels of borrowing. And that just can’t last. So either those private sector workers develop an export based economic boom to create more tax revenue or the PS pay and pensions bill is going to be slashed.

I do sometimes wonder if leaving the Euro and paying the PS in a devalued currency is the only way an Irish government will face that day though.

LOL again with the don’t comment if you didn’t apply for the job “logic”.

Is this really what public sector workers think?
1. don’t criticise the public sector if you don’t work there
2. the public sector is self funding … through taxes on public sector salaries

You couldn’t make this up. That said, if that’s really what ye believe then I can understand why you’re so angry.

“Those private sector workers (that are lucky to still have a job)”

Quite the little drama queen, aren’t we neil? You really don’t do your public service bashing any favours with statements like that. Deplorable and all as the unemployment figures are, there are still 4-5 people with jobs working in the private sector for every person on the dole.

Even if you feel so entitled to be overpaid in comparison to other european public servants, arithmetic and not economics dictate that it is not sustainable from a state that has to borrow over a 1/3 of its annual expenditure from these other European states paying lower public sector wages. Again not all public sector is overpaid but its is clear that many are, its as unjust as it is unsustainable.

Many in the private sector are overpaid also, for example, Sean Quinn’s adult children claiming that they can’t live on 2000 euro a week…Ger Killaly claiming that his house costs 1200 euro a week to maintain….Sean Fitzpatrick paying 600 euro per night in Poland and he is apparently unable to pay his creditors…don’t hide behind the economist’s mantra of “its simply a matter of arithmetic”..this is a society not an economy and people come first, this is a wholly private sector recession, the greed of the speculator brought the world to its knees and now they hide behind NAMA and other constructs and lay waste to public services and social welfare.

Owen, benchmarking etc. did not come in a vacuum. The increases in PS pay and PS numbers during the Celtic Tiger years were paid from the taxes from the property bubble.
That easy tax money is now long gone and replaced by massive levels of borrowing.

If you have a problem with high finance and borrowing then you must have a problem with the 40% of PS pay which is being paid out of borrowing.

Quinn, Killaly, Fitzpatrick …. all being funded by the taxpayer. I don’t think they are representative of the “private sector”. Neither are the banks btw. I think most people are really talking about the “productive sector”.

Was it not the private sector that was used for benbhmarking public sector pay. Is it not strange that Croke Park did not just agree to continue benchmarking against the private sector. Any body not willing to work for a maximum of €100,000 during this recession is a traitor to fellow citizens. Europe is adding to our troubles in an attempt to force a EU central bank as required by the one world order ideoligy

You can have employee rights and minimum wage standards w/o overpaying certain public servants. its the case in most European states. Of course many lower paid Public Servants are not overpaid but so many are and stating that they ought to be overpaid from an insolvent state to provide an argument to support private sector employees who are paying the tax together with borrowed money that overpays these public servants is obviously a difficult argument to sell.

Economicopoly! Is that you, Neil?!

Juvenile comment

Facts and your comment have a considerable distance between them. The idea that saying an insolvent state should not overpay its public service is the same as an argument that there should be no public service is idiotic. Trying to distinguish between “300,000 tax paying” and people on the dole is also idiotic both of you are receiving an income from borrowed money. While many lower income public service workers are clearly not overpaid, any independent observer can see that many mid level and high earning public service workers are especially when you factor in guaranteed pensions and as the state is insolvent consider it unjust when compared to what people doing the same work and paying tax in the private sector get for their efforts. Whether you believe it is unjust or not is irrelevant arithmetic is and Croke park pay rates are at odds with elementary arithmetic, as it is unjust it should end as it is unsustainable it will end.

Let’s say there were no non-public sector taxpayers. Where would your salary come from?

Just curious about what you think, as you’re bringing up the old public sector taxpayers chestnut again. Ireland is bankrupt. We’re borrowing money on a daily basis to keep the basic infrastructure going. Of course, we all know what happens to private sector organizations in this situation (massive job losses and pay cuts). We can’t apply that reasoning to the State because it delivers essential services that we all rely on. That said, we have to strike a balance here and right now it looks like there are serious issues with public spending vs value for money.

Ireland is borrowing money on a daily basis because the exchequer absorbed the debt accumulated by the banks,the private sector banks, to bail out the entire speculation sector. This is the salient point here, government finances were actually in good health before the bomb that was the bailout….

You need to check on that again Owen. You’re correct in pointing to the significant contribution of the bank debt, but the real elephant in the corner is the public spending deficit. If it wasn’t for that, we could have given two fingers to Merkel.

Hi Andy. Actually we ran that poll earlier this year. Hope you had your say on it – the link is here for your convenience if not: http://www.thejournal.ie/poll-should-we-repay-the-anglo-bondholders-334749-Jan2012/

Served!

Ah yes, a poll back in.. January.

I’ll be sure to catch the follow-up poll when it’s out next year.

Has your opinion changed since January? :D

I’ve said nothing about increments. They are one way among many in which remuneration gets arranged. As such they are not ‘for simply being in a job an extra 12 months’, as per your claim, and I see no need to defend them thus.

Now, maybe you can answer the question I asked you about your support for funding the financial sector -to the benefit of a particular sector of the population- at the cost of funding other services.

“Taxes will need to rise to pay for the CPA”

And how much is the CPA costing us neil? It’s saving us about 5 billion over its lifetime, plus ongoing savings on payroll and efficiencies thereafter.

What part of the CPA needs to be ‘paid for’.

TooTrue

If you show how Croke Park is “saving about 5 billion over its lifetime” you would be providing incredible information. Like alot of people in the public service, you are that far removed from reality that you think being overpaid with borrowed money is saving us 5 billion. The part of the CPA needs to be paid for is that which the state does not earn from taxes obviously.

By that do you include the Firemen, Gardai & Nurses who just worked the weekend while you were off relaxing or socialising!?!

Strangely, I include in that the people I described in my comment.

James, I worked 30 hours since friday.i’m online on my own dollar.

I’m clearly not referring to you then Robbie.

Who are you talking about then?And how do you know who is/isnt a public sector worker?

I worked 77 hours last week ( 7 nights on) as a nurse.
If you dont think Im entitled to time off, or entitled to night duty payments then I cant wait for you or yours to get sick….

Hard at it yourself then James??

(Private sector, on my lunch break before you ask!)

“It’s the private sector that funds your wages” (???) Where does the taxes Teachers pay go so!?! I’m not saying they generate enough tax return to cover education costs but they do pay taxes like the rest of us!!

Mel,

I work for an employer in the private sector and will most likely have a crap pension, if I have one at all. But the private sector doesn’t ‘fund’ my wages; I receive these in exchange for my labour power. Therefore it doesn’t ‘fund’ the taxes I pay -via PAYE, PRSI, VAT etc. for public services such as health and education. Moreover public sector workers such as teachers pay the same taxes and use the same services. So your claim is absurd: you might as well say it’s the public sector that funds the public sector. Kind of true, but pointless and incoherent.

In your comment above, you suggest that the degree of funding available for Special Needs Assistants is directly related to pay levels for teachers. But this is only true if you accept that the current budget allocation for education is unquestionably and irrevocably appropriate. Well, it isn’t, and only a thoroughly depoliticised idiot who swallows every lovin’ spoonful of owning class right-wing propaganda would accept that it is.

The current budget allocation for education is determined by government policy choices. One policy choice is whether to fund the financial sector -to the benefit of a particular sector of the population- at the cost of funding other services, such as health and education. This is a policy choice you support with your linking of funding for Special Needs Assistants to teacher pay levels. Maybe you could explain why you support this policy choice?

Public Servants paying tax is just handing back some of the money to the pot that pays them, the “tax” is to recorded as such for a more comprehensive tax admin system but Public service “tax” does not contribute a penny to the pot that pays them. Private Sector workers Tax and alot of borrowed money from countries where public servants are paid alot less is what funds the pot. Only in Ireland would an argument for these high salaries in the face of justice and arithmetic prevail such is the failed political system. Have you any argument against the idea that a public worker gets paid commensurate with the wages on offer in solvent european states of similar economic development, if we have to borrow to preserve that so be it, but honestly is there 1 argument for croke park that isn’t juts a cover for people immediate financial self interest.

LOL teachers pay taxes to pay their salaries. Again with the miraculous money tree. Listen mate, I’ve a bridge I’d like to sell you.

AIB and BOI are letting thousands of staff go and the people in the branches are hardly avaristic, they earned far less than people in similar admin posts in the public sector, who are not being let go, still have higher wages and guaranteed pensions, your engaging in self defeating arguments which only confirm that there is no sincere argument just an attempt at one to cover an understandable but blatant financial self interest, sadly though insincere arguments do not offset the arithmetic of trying to continue the same pay rates by borrowing money from countries with lower public pay rates to do it.

The assumption of private debt was unjust and is unsustainable but even if that was wiped clean in the morning the state still does not earn enough to overpay the public sector.

The public service have let thousands of people go in the last 12 months, at a massive cost saving to the exchequer, The banks are letting people go because the demand for their products and/or services has diminished or been eroded in some areas all together, supply and demand I think economists call it..however, schools and universities face bigger enrolments than ever, hospitals are full to capacity, crime is exploding all over the country…and your solution is simple arithmetic? Cut the pay, conditions, numbers and resources of the public sector? Society be damned? It is quite clear that your cold philosophy is based on theory and speculation rather than any real experience, if I suffer from “blatant self interest”, what is your particular malady?

I don’t have a malady I am trying to earn a living from contributing something of equal value in return and create a sustainable income, no sense of entitlement. the public sector let people “retire” early and with huge pay off on top of a guaranteed pension and many were rehired at the burden of new entrants for further money. Are you comparing these people being let go as the same as the bank. Again facts and your arguments are far off , every example you cite doesn’t really support your argument.

I never once said cut the entire public sector “soceity be damned as you say” if you cared for society you would be in favour of adjutsing public sector pay to reflect the states current income but “society be damned” is happy to demand high wages and get the givernment to borrow heavily to pay for it. “Society be damned” indeed!