The main problem is our government is too big. Everyone in the family now have jobs but taxpayers have to pay for it. We must downsize our government. For example: Abolish the RSA and re-merge it with the Department of Transport (like before). There is too much bureaucracy and regulation for the ordinary citizens due to a large government.

The alternative is higher taxes. You can’t have it both ways, Patricia. Even the pro-lifers realized that.

Pog, i see why your up in arms about 9.5k public workers being cut. You can’t wait until Ireland collapses!

The major problem is the fact these people have to justify their existence. In my experience, many front-line staff abuse(d) their power by, for example, continually asking for more and more documents. They were also quite rude and I witnessed them giving preferential treatment to people they knew. The government should mandate periodic compulsory rotation of front line civil servants in front-line offices to minimize any risk of cronyism. These offices should include: social welfare offices, council offices, transport offices, public transport offices, etc.

Will they not just tax people and businesses who actually have money instead of pushing people on the margin into the red and putting people in jobs onto the dole? Surely it would make more sense to challenge the prices the government buy goods and services for the public and how far that money goes. There are people in the civil and public service on megabucks but they are targeting front line services. Makes no sense.

When is this country going to snap out of it. We have already paid too much to these gangsters. Remember this is all because of bank debt which came about because of the lack of regulation in Europe. Typical Irish attitude. Its like getting hit by a car and then apologising for being in the way.

Lack of regulation got us into this mess!

Gerri,

It wasn’t lack of regulation which “got us into this mess”. It was corporate socialism: Fianna Fail could have skipped the bank guarantee but chose not to do so.

Can you elaborate on where those 80,000 losses should happen scrap?

Certainly sir

I’d start with IEDR (no figures cos they make me so sick I can’t even look them up)

Bord Failte. CEO on €160k pa and “entitled” to retire @55. Got €150m+ in grants off govt last year and spent €104m on administration. Scrap it

RSA. Road deaths been falling steadily every year since 1970 bar one – the yr RSA was set up in mid 2000s. Totally unnecessary Quango employing ~300 souls. cost ~15m pa to run in wages alone. Scrap it

Theres 800 other quangos, similar size, similar costs. Vast vast majority can go. Howlin reduced number of VECs from 33 to 16. Anyone notice? Anyone except Mrs Gilmore who parachuted from a CEO McJob in Dun Laoighre / Rathdown VEC to another McJob in dept of education on same €100k pa salary. Scrap em all

I’d abolish car tax and put 10c on a litre of petrol. No car tax office staff, Garda checkpoints, court time or printed disks. Paperwork. Envelopes. Phones. Lost productivity. Postage.

Abolish the CPA – another 3 quangos gone (the ones that oversee it)

Merge all the transport companies

Merge the energy quangos

Reduce the number of harbour quangos looking after our ports. So many I can’t count them

So I’d start around there. The PS think they are “entitled” to a McJob that doesn’t need doing to keep them in a style they’ve become accustomed to. The rest of us have to live in a state of penury to pay for them

I’m open to correction on this but the IEDR is not a public body. If it is then perhaps you can advise which department or minister it reports to?

Not seeing 80,000 there scrap.

Try again.

IEDR is based in UCD and looks after .ie domain names. They need to go

Werejammin. 800 quangos losing 100 staff = 80,000

Leinster Rugby is based out in UCD. Does that make them a public body?

IEDR appears to be a private company from what I can see so the first thing you need to do is get your facts right.

Now I don’t doubt for one second that there are bodies (quangos if you prefer) that are well past their time however you need to get a few things right in your head first. For example, the costs to business of a 10c per litre increase in fuel as distinct from the current rate of vehicle tax. The actual savings arising from something like that e.g. will Gardai still be required to mount checks, attend courts for no insurance? Illegal fuel? So is there an actual saving.

It’s easy to be a hurler on the ditch. All quangos are not of a similar size or cost and quite frankly your 80,000 figure is off the wall

Exactly 800 quangos each employing exactly 100 staff?

Link please…………..

Pat. I said at the beginning I didn’t look up the IEDR. I’ll get around to it soon

Werejammin. Typical PS attitude. Link? I’m not a spoon feeder. Do ur own research

I stand over the 80k figure. They need to go get a real job

Nite lads

I don’t need to. Common sense is that there are not 80 quangos with 100 staff each to lose. You’re firing out the bumper sticker statements you can’t back up and then throwing a hissy when asked where your numbers come from. We know where they come from And we know you had to stand up while pulling them out.

Edit: 800 quangos

Werejammmin. Very first green thumb was me. Excellently worded put down well done. Mail notification woke me from my slumber

Unfortunately my figures are accurate. I wish they weren’t

Car tax not making sense, what about those with their big phuck off 2 litre jeeps while us lost souls struggle in our 1.1′s. And I’m not paying another 10 cent in petrol!!! Can’t go anywhere as it is. I agree start cutting from the top down! And bring ridiculous pensions into line, what does a man of 65+ need 100,000 or more a year anyways?

What do you mean that you didn’t look the IEDR up? You’ve called it a quango, claimed to have engaged with the company and have gone on a public forum to denounce both it and the salaries of the staff so there is an assumption that you have some class of notion about what you are talking about.

You’ve chosen the name “Scrap Croke Park1″ and yet you appear to have no notion whatsoever about who is involved let alone what is involved in the delivery of public services.

Pat https://www.iedr.ie/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/IEDR-Annual-Report-Review-2011-released-24July2012.pdf

Page 38. Total staff:18. Total wages €1,199,603 or €66,645 each

No mention of CEO salary or Chairmanship remuneration. No mention of expenses for board members one of whom is retired from the IDA, 2 of whom are profs at UCD

If it looks like a Quango and smells like a Quango then it’s a Quango

OK, I’m going to explain this to you as best I can!

To be a quango, and therefore covered by the Croke Park Agreement, it needs to be established by legislation and reporting to a minister. There are other forms of public bodies e.g. semi-states but they are not covered by the agreement. Can you direct me to the enacting legislation, the minister it reports to, the minister’s nominees to the board or the minister’s shareholding in the company?

Accept the fact that the IEDR is a private business and it’s structure is clearly laid out in the annual report that you kindly sent me. Whatever gripes you have with their operation will not make it a quango, their salaries will not make it a quango and even if the board membership was 100% public servant (and it is far from that) it would not make it a quango.

You are wrong in this matter and are compounding it by being silly. Citing salaries as evidence is merely confirming that many people in the private sector are well paid. I don’t believe to be a bad thing. Do you? And after all that the IEDR appears to be in reasonably good financial health. You could argue about rising employment and admin costs but overall they appear to be doing alright.

Now if you want to debate any of your other ideas I’ll gladly oblige you and I may even agree with you as long as you have the numbers worked out!

Pat. I’ve dug some more and I accept the IEDR was set up as a private company, not a Quango

However i do not accept that it is necessary at all. They did such a crap job that ComReg (you’ll accept ComReg is a Quango?) took over all policy functions

As the IEDR is now simply a service provider not a policy maker. Good article on them here

http://whoisireland.com/ienews-ministerregulatesiedr.html

It’s an old article and while they have improved they’re still a pain the hole to deal with and still stifling innovation and still over charging

Pain in the hole and overcharging? Sounds like the electrician that called to me yesterday!

Stephen. Have you ever thought of taking up golf?
Or fishing?

Stephan we have one of the lowest number of public servants per percentage of population in the whole of the OECD. Ourselves and the UK are at the bottom.

But why let the facts get in the way of your ill informed rant.

Sssshhhh eric, Fine Gael need a bogeyman to distract while they hand billions of our money over to bondholders…

Eric we have 1 in 6 working in the PS. Many (not all) on inflated pay. We simply can’t afford it

You will have to think about changing your name to scrap croke park 2 you’re looking a bit tired and dated.

“Eric we have 1 in 6 working in the PS. Many (not all) on inflated pay. ”

70% of the PS earn less than the average industrial wage.

Why the dishonesty?

Agreed Stephen. Well said. Disregard the feckless commentators.

So Eric you are judging Irekand against other countries with the same problem, eg France and Germany. Plus you fail to take into the fact Irish civil servants in Ireland are the best comparatively paid plus other countries actually have genuine services that need to be staffed, transport being just one. But why let the facts get in the way of your ill informed rant.

I’m so sorry petal, oh wait Simon. You call that a rant, I always thought the Private sector employees were tough from the gulag like conditions you work In unlike us fat and soft PS who lay about all day with nothing to do… :)

Once again as is typical in these debates when an info fact gets rebuked lads go and fire off another indo fact (or are they half facts). First of all there are about 30 countries in the OECD, mostly European but Asian and American too, not just France and Germany.

While Irish PS do earn more than the most Europeans, Irish private sector workers also earn more and Irish welfare recipients also ‘earn’ more, sure isn’t the cost of living in ireland far higher than all Europe (except Scandinavian of course).

Sorry to blow your bubble but if you learned anything from this its not to believe everything you read on the indo, open your mind a little and not let prejudice get in the way.

The world moves on and even those of us who live on the planet public servant embrace new technology. The staffing levels in social welfare offices are a fraction of what they used to be and they have taken on a multitude of additional activities.

I suggest you read the social welfare legislation and get an idea of the statutory functions that can’t be undertaken by a computer.

A public sector strike is news to me. Do you know something that the rest of us don’t know?

An extra 180k in welfare every week yea that’s great..there are jobs there that need doing and its not to do with front line staff its all the high up on 100k+ a year that cause the problem yet these jobs remain highly paid

The ones at the top, are the problem. Too many chiefs, not enough indians!

Stephen
Do you have comparative data to show that the numbers of Senior Managers is in excess of the norm for Public Service Organisations or would that just be an intuitive guess on your part?

These people are tax payers! Putting them out of a job just to satisfy the numbers game will adversely affect the wider economy. I agree with tackling those on high salaries first, including the politicians and judiciary.

@mark,where have you been for the last 10 or so years..last year alone saw a massive increase in publicity highlighting the mass amounts of “wages” that are paid and to the many who get them

@ Gerri

It wasn’t lack of regulation which “got us into this mess”. It was corporate socialism: Fianna Fail could have skipped the bank guarantee but chose not to do so.

Sorry Regonald, you are wrong about regulation. It has been well documented that the banks broke all of their own rules in relation to how and to whom they loaned money. It was criminally negligent. They were answerable to no one. They put this country in an impossible situation which the FF Govt enabled them to do. When the crash happened, as it was inevitable that it would, FF compounded the problem by extending the bank guarantees to those who were basically engaged in online gambling. Cowan et al should face charges of economic treason for their part in this.

There was no “impossible” situation facing the politicians. The politicians could have done what Iceland did. Instead, they wanted votes so they engaged in a bank guarantee thinking the profligate spenders would give #.1 to FF. It backfired.

Bottom line:
Regulation undermines investment, confidence and thus growth.

Regonald, the FF govt enabled this impossible situation to develop. They are as complicit as the banks through their failure to regulate. In countries where regulation was tighter (Germany, Netherlands and France eg.) they are not in as bad a position as where regulation was lax (Ireland, Greece, Italy). Iceland is not exactly having a picnic either.

Yeah yeah same old generalisations

“Well considering how poorly they’re performing now with the current number”

Can you elaborate on this poor performance please, given that some departments have lost nearly a quarter of staff and the public service has taken a 14% paycut on average?

But without their tax contributions its further pressure on our already fragile economy and finances

Putting them on the dole won’t help those already there. Spite is not a good reason for enforced redundancy. It needs to have a sound economic basis, which it doesn’t .

Gerri McCaffery -

A big Government is more expensive to the average taxpayer, less connected to local issues, tends to be more inefficient and frustrating. A big government entails more bureaucracy and overt-regulations. This regulation has made the experience of getting simple things like a driving license a tortuous, expensive process.

Small government means less bureaucracy and frustration, which equals more room for the individual to shape his or her future and for the self-employed to expand (since they don’t have to give up as much in downtime as under a large(r) government), which in the end is beneficial to society as a whole),
- since government is typically seen as hostile at policies, individuals and others make more efficient sure of such resources (this is seen as an example of where people are more careful about how they spend their own money),
- although many government departments are essential, there are many things that government does that is not as good investments of the tax money; at some point we have to say ‘no’ to a further expansion of government and accompanying regulations on ordinary services.

Mark Dalt,

Firstly, I have never had a problem getting a driving licence. Secondly, see my comment above on the pitfalls of poor regulation. Thirdly, Civil and public servants, as PAYE workers, are higher than average taxpayers.

You’re not getting my point, Gerri. If you had the misfortune to have to obtain a drivers license today, you would understand how bureaucratic and expensive it is. A big government created this mad policy. Unfortunately, in Ireland the “doesn’t bother me” attitude from those who got their license during the more progressive times.

Me thinkin the same. Eu meeting last week. Theme jobs stability growth banking union. It seems to be goin around in circles.

Karolyn,

The government doesn’t create jobs – it is supposed to create the environment to create jobs (less regulation, bureaucracy, smaller government etc).