Sorry guys this is bull. keep the embargo and lower the wages and start sacking those that abuse their holiday pay entitlement…actually cut the entitlement to certified sick only. If they don’t like it….they can go to some other civil service in some other country that will take them…i doubt there would be many…i deal with the civil service every day in business both in Ireland and the uk, in the general scheme of things with the exception of a few, they are worlds apart over there in their professionalism and work ethic…it would be no harm to burst a few bubbles on this side of he water and start realising that the wages are the real reason why the HSE is broke

There will never be a pay review from the top down in any sector, ever!

Sean those waiting times have been pretty constant for the last couple of years. The problem is that those services operate on a nine to five basis only.

I think most people aren’t complaining about nurses, teachers and gards, but about all those others who earn high salaries do little work and work truly from 9:30 to 4:30, or even less and get increments no matter how poorly they perform. Or what about the whole layer of middle management?
And it’s exactly those people who hide cowardly behind the Crome park deal and the above mentioned group!

i would have no issue with front line staff as they are an essential part of the country i do have an issue with a bloated health service that has a disproportionate level of admin staff and middle management that are sucking the system dry we have a health service that is not run by the health minister by by an executive board. cut the ratio of admin and managers then we could restore the services that have been cut. we have a public sector that needs to be performance managed and if not up to standard disciplinary or punitive action should take place don’t reward people for their inefficiencies

Bravo Collette… The truth about the “cushy” jobs in the public sector..

brilliant, and when these people do need the nurses firemen ambulance drivers gardai let’s hear them complain when there not there because it is more beneficial to go on social welfare than work in crap conditions in our hospitals and on our streets

but the thing is mark i fully agree with you, front line is badly needed but its they are the easy targets, any cuts wont be to managers who manage nothing it will be on the little guy. so if that agreement goes expect even less guards teachers and nurses.

i was actually now that we are on the subject talking to a garda today and he told me he had applied for the london met as things were gone so bad in ireland. Why should we lose these people

I was also talking to a teacher in a primary school and things are so bad there that teachers have to buy the photocopying paper for the school and other bits and bobs as they dont get them paid for by the state. this is just gone nuts

Well said. Now that’s nice speech writing but I don’t belive this man can deliver anything. Hopefully I’m wrong and some layers of management can be streamlined while the frontline is protected.
As for the meds, that wont happen.

It will be is on the frontline that are shafted as usual…. They’ll have a fight on their hands though!!!

No consultant in this country gets paid €250k. It’s now €152k, easily verified online.

Totally agree!

Still too much

Love seeing people outside the medical profession complain about high salaries. I’d love to see them work somewhere in the region of 20-30 hours a week unpaid in what is probably one of the hardest jobs in the country.

@Ross
come on — plenty of people work 20/30 extra hours a week for no extra pay and don’t earn anywhere near a 6 figure salary like those consultants.

We see the same pattern whenever this comes up. The people at the bottom of the pyramid come out to protest at what they believe is an attack on them. The ones at the top keep quiet.

This isn’t about rich and poor. It’s about a department of the government which is inefficient and wastes money that could be better spent on providing a world class health service. The people who benefit most from health service reform are the poor. Do you think the rich have to queue for public health services?

However, this is not an example of that.

This is the poor telling the relatively rich that you must share the burden.

Love the way, how for decades, the private sector workers have been led to believe that public sector workers are (a) All on huge salaries, way above them, and (b) are worthless leeches, preying on the state and whose main goals in life are to pretend to be ill and, when at work, to do as little as possible…
That is, while risking their safety as police, firemen etc., and indeed, in these dangerous times as nurses, hospital workers and even teachers.

I don’t believe either (a) or (b), but don’t let that get in the way of a good rant.

Exactly, Collette. The vast majority of public sector workers are both good workers and poorly paid.

Colette it is a statistical fact that Irish nurses are the highest paid in Europe. Do you believe that such pay is merited because of the job or the cost of living or for some other reason we don’t understand?

Exactly! Multi layered management structures that make no sense what so ever!

Just to add, there was supposed to be €100 million saved by reilly renegotiating fees with his consultant buddies. Strange he didn’t mention that instead of fine gaels ‘noun-verb-croke park’ tactic.

I’d suggest capping all public salaries at 100k. No exceptions under any circumstances.

So get more loans to pump money into wages? And wat happens when that runs out? get more and more loans??? Is this not why we are in this mess I the first place?

Go work in an other country so and see how low your wages would be for doing the same job…and stop taking sick days…

Sad but true Toby and it will go downhill quick

That should read Public Service Cuts

See how that goes when you need to be rescued from your burning bedroom, plucked from a river, or cut from a car wreck at 3am on a saturday night. Idiot

That’s a stupid comment. Are you just going to close down the Garda station, the fire station and the hospital at 8pm cos people don’t like working nights anyway?? 24hr cover is necessary. And yes, not everyone likes to do nights – therefore the extra pay is the incentive to make sure you are rescued from a burning building, or looked after if u have a heart attack, or don’t have to wait til 8am if your house is burgled.

Some people don’t get sarcasm!

Yeah the irony two people who don’t understand sarcasm calling me stupid and an idiot is really delicious.

Sorry Sean, missed the sarcasm there, but you’ll have to excuse me because some people are actually advocating just that. Did you know that some HSE ambulances in Dublin have recently started ‘daytime manning only’ leaving all the other ambulances and their crews to take up the slack at night even tho they have been overworked and over stretched for years. I wonder how many tiers of management got together to come up with that one.

just a condsideration : lots of absenteeism is due to in the case of nurses, care staff, BEING EXHAUSTED AND CONTINUALLY WORKING UNDERSTAFFED WHILE DOING THEIR BEST TO CARE FOR PEOPLE FROM BIRTH TO END OF LIFE.
(not a snide on your comment everyone is entitled to their opinion), cannot comment on absenteeism of the bureaucrats and paper pushers but is suspect they are less stressed and overworked than care staff and nurses. thanks for reading.

If I could click on your thumbs up multiple times I would!

Reap what you sow – when your public services are reduced to a trickle it will be too late

Some people are over paid in the public sector. Cutting their pay won’t reduce services. Some people shouldn’t have a job in the public sector and are non-productive staff. Cutting their pay won’t affect services.

I smell a strike of front line services across the board in support for the nurses who are inevitably going to be the scape goat. I bet there’s more than a measly 70mil to be saved from moonlighting consultants!! The working poor and the little guy will be shafted yet again!! And not before time, when the basic services crumble then maybe the rest of the country will see that the Fine Geal Tax party is ruining what little we have left of this country!

Moonlighting consultants?

Consultants in both private and public hospitals

The most any consultant earns is about 170k, and thats on a public only contract. If they earn more than that it’s on a private wage, and you’re not paying it, therefore, not your problem.

€170k a year for a part-time job is the taxpayers problem.

A part time job?
Ok, a few myths disbanded please.
1: consultants earn a max of 170k for a fully public contract, no private work. Consultants who have both public and private patients earn far, far, far less than this. That includes overtime, providing call, and taking into account the crap working conditions.
2: it’s not a part time job. Doctors can work anything upto 100 hours a week, very often starting work at 7am Monday morning and not seeing the light of day until 10pm on Tuesday night.
Yes, consultants earn a lot. Have you any idea how long it takes to get there? If you’re lucky, you might get there by 40. In every other country across the globe, you can be a consultant by 30 if you want.
The training is non-existent, the working conditions are crap, the reason a consultant is paid more in Ireland is to make them stay. That is the only thing that stops every doctor here from boarding a flight to Australia, and even now, it’s not doing much good.
Reconfiguring the HSE is what is needed. Not hopping on the band wagon and telling the very people holding the system together (docs, nurses), they earn too much. Because for what they put up, there isn’t a big enough salary in the world to soften the blow.

It will be the very nurses you speak of that will more than likely be hit! Not consultants two very different jobs and I think the average a&e nurse puts up with a hell of a lot more abuse than a consultant IMO

You’re being too selective with your facts there Michael. Let’s be fully open and transparent and look at the actual pay and conditions of all the consultants.

@kevin o brien
You’re right Kevin there are lots of non productive public sector staff but they aren’t going to be hit any harder than the tens of thousands who are productive. You can be sure the ones at the top will suffer least though and they ironically are the biggest problem. Bench marking gave civil servants a far higher wage increase in the good times than mid and low level staff.
Senior civil servants astronomical wages are what are driving up average wages. I heard figures comparing public and private sector pay the other day on the radio and knew then that this news wouldn’t be far behind.
Why is nobody on top of this calling for td’s pay cuts or judges or senior barristers and their ridiculous publicly paid wages or even a reduction in their “expenses”. I hear the oireachtas bar is running high tabs these days…
There’s so many better ways to save money in this country but it’s always the low and mid level staff in public sector and emergency services who end up being hit.
Lord knows where this will all end!

Hi John,

If I were minister, I wouldn’t cut pay. I think it’s a blunt instrument and disheartens staff who are working hard and are struggling as much as workers in the private sector to make ends meet. What we’re avoiding dealing with are workers who serve no vital function within the organisation. The reality is that they’re superfluous to the efficient running of the healthcare system and need to be made redundant to restore some semblance of efficiency to the system. That’s a hard reality to come to terms with, especially since that’s a human being you’re consigning to the dole queue and whole families will be affected. That said, it’s going to have to happen sooner or later if we’re to reclaim the health system and prevent a loss of service in the quest to reduce costs. I’d rather lose 10 backroom staff than 10 nurses.

Has anybody ever wondered why porters are the highest paid people in the hospital on the Sunday night of a bank holiday??

The way i see it….If a guy sweeping the road is entitled to approx 28k a year and gets to take home virtually all of it then a person who saves peoples lives every day is totally entitled to 170k a year in which they will pay up on 45% of it in tax anyways….The constant bemoaning of anyone who earms a significant wage in Ireland right now is a pain in the arse… If you get paid a lot its most likely because you deserve it….and the whinging f**ks on here would be better served looking to see what they can do to make themselves for financially significant.

Sack them all and start again! :)

Comment reflects your intellectual abilities.!

Really intellectual contribution!

Mick – Reilly is a blundering hypocrite with the backbone of a butterfly. The righteous indignation we frequently saw when he was in opposition has disappeared. Well able to talk the talk but incapable of delivery. Cheers for the compliment by the way.

I imagine it’s a lot easier to be indignant in opposition than in government. It’s his job to reform the health service and cut costs. That means grappling with the leviathan that is the HSE as well as handling the unions and the prospect of industrial action, all while trying to minimise the impact on services. That’s nigh on impossible to manage in a Labour coalition.

I have to laugh at these retorts. Great way to win a debate with a nice personal insult. Oreilys post as minister should be reconsidered, Stubbs, conflict of interest in owning private nursing homes while Minster for health, hiding while a massive cuts statement was made but spoke about broadband and now welching on the croke park agreement. Resign minister you failed!

Why? If 70%of your budget is pay what’s left ,Supplies ,Equipment and structures so we can stop buying medication etc don’t repair or replace equipment ,lease buildings and put patients in tents because that’s where you go if pay is untouchable.
Read yesterday’s papers public sector pay has increased by 2.5% while private sector pay has again decreased by 0.5%.not taking holidays pensions and sick days etc into account.
Pre benchmarking unions shouted for parity with private sector so let’s give to them with job losses wage cuts.Before the red thumb brigade start on about the wage cuts that were implemented dont forget the annual increments that have replaced most of these.there is no need to threaten front line services further by staff reductions just reduce pay and take an axe to administration.
Will there be strikes ? Yes but we must stand up against them.the alternative is to do nothing and let the sick and infirm suffer or be held to hostage by Doran and his cronies.ICTU bear the same responsibility for our mess as Bankers,Government and Developers.Their greed and us before others is mindbogling.As a retired .union member I find it hard to understand.
?

It’s called The Croke Park Agreement because Fianna Fail continuously played political football with the Unions and finally when they had outdone themselves with Benchmarking in the lead up to a Banking collapse they still couldn’t understand the damage they had caused. Having brought in the knackers they then gave guarantees to the Public Service Unions that strangle the country while unemployment statistics are for the private sector only.
We still have the highest paid doctors and nurses in Europe and seventy percent of the total spend in Health goes on staff. Reduce salaries and employee numbers and run the sector like a business rather than a home for the bewildered.

The HSE is run like a business….that’s the problem

A 2009 study showed that there’s 42,000 admin staff in the HSE with 62,000 frontline staff! Go figure…………

Can you please tell me where your information about consultants pay comes from?? Because it’s entirely wrong

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0326/1224313884434.html

While on average hospital consultants receive a salary of around €180,000 per year (with some academic consultants receiving more than €200,000), McGrath maintains when all earnings are taken into account the overall figures can be far higher.

“On average you would have 400 or 500 consultants earning in excess of €200,000 – which is mad in the time we are in.” He says one consultant earned in excess of €400,000 from the public system, although this may have involved some form of legacy payments.

We have one of the costliest healthcare systems in the OECD, the youngest population in the eurozone and a healthcare system that is, at best, mediocre.
This is what happens when politicans, ultimately, run the health service.

http://www.thejournal.ie/irelands-health-spending-among-highest-in-oecd-308925-Dec2011/

@ Joanne

There were 17,377 admin staff as of October 2010 according to the HSE National Service Plan 2011.

@ Dermot D
I note your crocodile tears regarding patients but your priority is similar to the Minister and HSE management in trying to find cutbacks irregardless of the consequences. As for your demand for the government “to get tough with the unions and the Irish people need to support them”, you imply that the union members are not Irish people. The unions have been opposing cutbacks since 2008. Where did you stand at the time? Beside Brians Lenihan and Cowen I suspect.

In your rush to cut public services just who do think will educate your children, ensure the streets are safe at night, ensure you are treated when you’re brought into hospital, who will repair the roads, etc etc. the lazy ‘cut someone else’s pay’ argument is hollow.

@kingstown: that is the typical rhetoric we here from unions and it’s a great shield for the wasters to hide behind.
But the fast majority of civil servants aren’t nurses, Garda or teachers.
The problem with the civil service is: that the bureaucracy has expanded to facilitate the expanding bureaucracy.

@ Kingstown

The only people supporting cutting public services are the public service unions. Scrapping croke park is about cutting bloated public service pay not public services. Like the real world, public servants will have to learn to do more for less.

What’s your alternative? Keep borrowing to fund day-to-day expenditure?

The public sector workers are online tonight, the croke park agreement. The biggest farce i have ever read. It should be scrapped. The country is in a mess and this agreement is making it sink even further.

The croke park agreement and its workers are robbing the country and tax payer. 10% of the HSE are out sick…. Only in Ireland……. To many people emplyed in so many areas of the public sector doing very little. Reduce the waste and employ in police and hospitals something that will serve the public alot better.

Your anger is directed at the wrong target.

Oh really?With only a handful of people????Nobody wants to rock the E E C boat….:( -excepting you and I-

We are living beyond our means because FF spent 12 years dismantling the tax base in favour of transaction taxes such as stamp duty – it is not the cost if public services that is causing our crisis at the moment. It was the private sector that got us into this mess in the first place. All those wonderful captains of industry such as Anglo Irish, INBS, the CIF.

Numbers employed in the public sector increased by more than 100,000 during the Celtic tiger years. The pay bill tripled.
What has that got to do with the private sector?

“Having been bought by the ‘robbers’, the self-appointed ‘cops’ have, since the late 1980s, stayed nearly silent lest they damage the regulatory charade performed by the Government and rubber-stamped by their own members in charge of the regulatory bodies.

The Unions, of course, were neither unique, nor the most active participants in regulatory capture of the state by vested interests. Irish semi-state companies, banks, protected professions and public sector own (outside the Unions-led) self-interests were. Nonetheless, by deploying the rhetoric of ‘integrity’ and by relying on the arguments that their actions ‘protected the vulnerable’, the Unions were some of the most damaging – ethically speaking – players in the game.

In effect, the Irish state didn’t just tolerate corruption, it actively managed and encouraged it. Even debating the merits of the form of corruption embodied by Social Partnership shows how instrumental ethics replaces real values when the cancer of corruption metastases. Social Partnership is simultaneously a collusive cartel, a conduit for influence peddling, a vehicle for patronage and a price-fixing mechanism. Its goal is to preserve the status quo of wealth and income distribution, skewed in favour of the Partners.”

Constantin Gurdgiev

It’s a fiction that taxes are low in Ireland.

I paid for public sector pay rises many times over when I paid those transaction taxes you refer to. Now that the wheels have come off the property sector scam, you want to increase my income taxes to pay for the lifestyle to which you’ve become accustomed? Not a chance.