@cormac. I was reading your comments and was admiring the basis of your argument but then you went and mentioned Eddie feckin Hobbs and all your previous work was undone right when you mentioned him!!!! I think that many people think that public sector workers do not pay taxes as per private sector, they pay exactly the same amount my friend!! Again this private v public argument gets us absolutely no where. The government are delighted that this divide goes on as it deflects it from the absolute disgrace at the way there running this state. We should all be pulling together, private, public, farmers, tall people, small people….why cause this cancerous divide between people who both have been affected by the wrong doings of the government. Cormac wake up pal, we’re all in this together

This is not unrelated to the idea that we’re sliding into an emergency budget for this year, and a second bailout in following years.

Where did you get it that there has been no pay cuts? I’m a frontline worker and my pay is down by over 15%. The govt. is taking close to 60c per €1 from me. If I showed you my weekly payslip after (barely) paying my mortgage etc. you’d be shocked, and many of my colleagues are in the same boat. It is the paper pushers in the public sector that need to be sorted out. There are also way too many high ranking ‘officials’. How did this small little country get to the point of paying public servants massive 6 figure sums while the services that need the resources are fighting for them! I dunno!!

What’s needed in this country is a reintroduction of the death penalty. This could prove highly effective in raising the spirits of the nation in these gloomy times if such sentences were to be carried out in public.
Just picture it; several banksters, ex-cabinet members, or pyrite-ridden property tycoons being marched down to the steps of the GPO every friday at ten to six having been judged guilty of treason against the state, and then seeing them publicly hanged.
Who could dispute the assertion that such a spectacle could only serve to gladden the heart of every Irish man and woman?
I hear the stampeding of red thumbs!!!!

The position of Mr Hayes appears to be at odd with the position of Mr Gilmore but as the lads and ladies of the labour party have a lot more to worry about it seems like a timely ball hopping exercise.
The labour party will not be happy with new opinion poll as they may slip to 10 %
Interesting times ahead

@Cormac, Eddie Hobbs was a cheerleader for Celtic tiger excess, and was on tv every other night during that period, advising viewers on how to purchase that “little hoidaway (sic) in Bulgaria.” I’m sure he’s a grand fellow, but don’t bestow on him that which he’s not entitled to. Btw, I’m glad you’re hanging in there, despite our difference of opinion.

cormac well done for giving up the cigarettes… but just a little insight into my life… we don’t smoke, eat out or drink and that isn’t by choice its because we cannot afford it… my kids do not get treats because if they did they wouldn’t have a birthday, Christmas etc. we have at least 20 years left in our jobs again not by choice it is because we have to. yes i have a pension but surprisingly enough i actually pay for it… i don’t complain about working because i actually like it even though i would be financially better off on the dole…

@cormac u r obviously one of the private sector workers that thinks that u alone are supporting this country… wake up and smell the coffee… all public sector workers are paying like everyone else for the past governments mistakes… the likes of u mouthing off only cause a divide throughout the workforce of this country…. what about the public sector workers that i know personally that lost their jobs before Christmas because they only had a 3 year contract!!! where is the sympathy for them… i agree that they’re is senior managers that need to come down to reality but the general public workforce break their backs for their wages and are afraid to say anything about it because of people like you that just want to voice nonsense. my husband is a public sector worker and i am a semi state worker and why don’t u walk a mile in our shoes before u open ur mouth.

Cormac, you cant be working THAT hard! Seems to me you have a whole lot of time on your hands to be able to continually come out with sych ramblings. Or maybe your just hyper efficient?

@cormac… with all due respect u have no idea. i know of two so called “well paid” public sector workers that have lost their houses as a result of this economic disaster. i am left with 40euros a week after paying for fuel and childcare which in turn means that by the end of the week i have nothing!!! after my husband gets gets paid and after the mortgage etc is paid we are left with 110euro to feed our children and TRY and save a fiver… we didn’t cause the countries problems but why do we have to contribute more than everyone else to fix it?? and your statement about Eddie hobbs… really such an esteemed business owner should know that he advised to invest in a bogey investment that later failed!!! this country should stand together not judge peoples situations at the end of the day the government and banks got us into this mess and its the people paying dearly for it.

Cormac, you are clearly an aggrieved ex-private sector employee, who probably lived it up during the tiger years, and now sees the entire private sector as the bogey man, the cause of all our ills. I can imagine your pals rolling their eyes as you yet again ruin another dinner party with a booze-fuelled rant against the EVIL public sector. I suggest you take up a hobby; I personally find knitting very relaxing.

The only urgency, visible in many different manifestations of the ultra patriotic ‘austerity programme’ (aren’t we good lads), is the subservient, headlong rush to pay homage to unsecured bondholders!

this is the real budget. see the pattern: we have to increase the price of alcohol for ur health, oh and a few ‘environmental’ taxes on the way. cut public sector pay. put the revenue on war footing. get a few well healed newstalk contributors, called eddie or fergus to attack the public sector. is that bt the telecm giant, hosting this? if so, why?

I wish the Minister the best of luck with this poison chalice. More urgency is perhaps an overstatement. Even a tiny bit of urgency would create huge efficiencies, but the whole public sector is infected with an insulated lethargy that makes the dead look like frenetic zombies.

As Don says above, it is practices and procedures that need to change. Our public servants need to work smarter. I don’t believe we can suggest that they don’t work. I think they do, if we could capture their energy and commitment and focus it on delivering results using better management, policies and procedures, we could be a nation to be rightly envied.

As public sector workers it is their duty to do what is right for this country first, otherwise they should not be public sector workers. They have no right to protect wasteful work, poor performance or to hide behind the official secrets act and play dumb when they see it happening. They allowed our country slide into chaos and as long as their ATM was still coughing up, they were happy.

I would be very happy to see them share the pain those of us who struggle in the real world have suffered. Pay cuts, my rosy butt, they haven’t had any. All that has been happening to them so far is that they have had to hand up privileges and pay awards gained under false pretences. False earnings granted to keep them quiet and pacified.

If there weren’t so many of them we could have a revolution and replace them. Unfortunately many good and worthy workers would be hurt. It would be far better to have the change come from within, but there might not be enough time for that to seep in through their firewalls. So we are back to that sense of urgency.

One suggestion I have would be for the Government to announce well in advance of the next budget that there would be a 10 or 20% cut in payroll costs next year and that those concerned would have the next 10 months to negotiate how that would be delivered without a reduction in output. I’ve thought through the next few steps in such a process, but I would be interested in hearing reactions first.

The Croke Farce Agreement should never have agreed prior to an analysis of the minimum number of staff required in the public sector and where the pockets of inefficiency and time wasters were located. Only then should a redundancy scheme, including involuntary redundancies, have been implemented. Instead the most stupid approach to numbers reduction was taken, an approach that almost guarantees that very little of the dead wood under retirement age will leave. For example, the medical system is in a permanent state of disorder, and yet large numbers of doctors, nurses and other clinical staff are being encouraged to take early retirement. The result next March with be many fewer necessary staff to deal with patients. Any company that conducted staff reduction in this way, encouraging the retirement of critical staff, would collapse in a matter of months. The Agreement symbolises all that is dysfunctional in the relationship between government and the public service.

QUESTION Can we legislate retrospectively in this country to introduce legislation that would allow the government to strip those responsible for ruining the country of all of their assets. I mean any assets gained during the peak years of the tiger economy when wisdom says we should have been cooling things down. Could we take the pensions fo the incompetent politicians and public servants and leave them on state pensions. They would be ok on that since they seemed to think our widows and elderly could survive on it. Can we gather together all of the top bankers bonuses and the commissions paid to ruthless financial lenders who sought only to line their own pockets without considering the consequences for their customer if the economy turned. Can we decide to pay the bondholders back only what they paid for their bonds. Most of these bonds have been traded on the financial markets and many of those being paid off now, bought them as junk bonds during the panic of the collapse, rather than paying the original face value of the bond.

Can we quickly put in place a tax structure that taxes speculative trading so heavily that investors begin to focus on sustainable long term returns rather than short term gains? Keep speculation where it belongs, at the racecourses and gambling tables. Speculation on an economy is a form of terrorism and can cause as much hardship and grief as a car bomb, it just takes longer to realise it.

Hi Paul, saw that. Not bothered. There are problems with the public sector, whether people like it or not. It is a drain on our economy at a time when we can ill afford it. What it needs is not just gentle painless reform, but radical reform. As an outsider, and someone who runs their own business, I see many areas that could be changed and result in not just savings, but improvements in services.

Those trapped within the system have to face an unenviable choice of sharing the burden of cuts, or making those cuts and changes where they will have most impact. Let us face it, front line staff are not really the issue. The public can see the work they do and appreciate the hard work they put in. To a large extent they are not even part of the problem.

A properly executed change programme would more than likely result in rewarding front line staff with more autonomy, training and development opportunities and dare I say it, more money and recognition.

The internal world of the public sector is a bit like a Victorian landscape. It is an upstairs downstairs world. The public sector has at least two classes of people, those who deliver output, services etc. and those who sit in their lofty carpeted estates and oversee their little empires. They live in a world that time has left well behind.

These little emperors and there are many of them, have built a system of checks and balances that ensure blame can never fall on them. There are duplicated and triplicated channels of communication. There are procedures for checking expenditure and change that cost more to operate than the change itself. Decisions that could be made immediately by those at the front line need to be passed up the chain of command and back down again so that those at the front line don’t get the idea that they are smart and capable.

The system is designed to smother initiative and innovation and is a hangover from a time when all communication consisted of wax sealed envelopes and little barefoot children running about the streets with them. Even where electronic communication has arrived, the old procedures are kept in place, just in case there ever comes a time when we run out of electricity or a nuclear war wipes out all the electronic records.

Believe me, it it comes to that, we will have a lot more to worry about than paper records. Besides, we saw what a little bit of fire can do to paper records back when the Four Courts went up in flames. Look around you Paul. Are you really proud of the public service in its entirety. Is there no sector you would see that needs some change.

As someone who has not earned enough in recent years to pay tax, I feel a little cheeky to be chucking stones at those who live in glass houses, but I have put almost everything back into keeping my business afloat and paying my debts. I feel I have a right to complain about the pace of public sector reform, both as a citizen and as a person who knows that he will shortly begin to pay taxes again, because I have taken the cuts, made the difficult choices and lived like a pauper, without any financial support from the state for the past 4 years.

Those who feel that public servants are being unduly blames for the failings of this state should consider whether spoiled children should be blamed for their behaviour. If it isn’t your fault, please feel free to point the finger at those who got us to where we are.

Is it your parents, in this case, probably the senior civil servants and past politicians, as I’m not talking about your real parents, only using a metaphor, please point fingers and name names. We need to find a starting point to unravel the ineffectiveness of our investment in the public sector.

It would be a far better thing if we do it ourselves rather than wait for Brussels or the IMF to come in heavy handed and probably destroy what good will remains in the system.

Grainne, I hope my last post has added a bit of clarity to my first one. Walking a mile in the shoes of a public servant seems like a wonderful opportunity at the moment. What would I do with a wage if I had one. . .

Let us face it, someone inside the public sector knew we were headed for trouble with our economy years before the dirt hit the fan. Given this is Ireland, that someone is probably hundreds of someones, but nobody stood up to the politicians. They all kept their mouths firmly shut, because that is their role in life. Where have I seen this kind of thinking happen before!! An all in the name of democracy.

Politicians are people not popes, they can make mistakes and they do. If they are not challenged, they go on to do more harm. If they are challenged and still go on to cause more harm, then they have failed in their role and need to be exposed and the people need to be given a chance to democratically replace them. A vote is a lotto ticket. You cannot expect to get it right every time.

At the end of the day, that kind of thinking suggests that this mess is all the fault of the people who voted in previous governments and public servants have no responsibility or moral duty to ensure the voters choice behaves in an ethical and responsible fashion. Abdication of responsibility???

Give me a break folks. I was once told that I wasn’t being interviewed for a role in a public sector organisation because I’d upset too many people with the amount of change I’d be looking to drive and the pace I’d be looking to drive it at. And all I was looking to do was bring some private sector initiative to the a role I knew was failing to do what was right. Those who had spoken to me knew my thinking was what was needed, but the organisation was too set in its ways to change.

It’s a pity, because I can also be subtle in my ways when I want to, and I am also a firm believer in helping people achieve their potential and live a more rewarding work life. In my case, the ones facing the most threat would have been the management and unfortunately they were the decision makers. Perhaps I was too innocent and open in my approach. Call a spade a spade and you’ll probably end up getting hit with it.

Good luck with the change process, I probably won’t be involved, but if you see managers being moved or let go and front line workers getting more say in how they deliver the services they want to deliver, I might have sneaked in by some back door.

Implementation, IMPLEMENTATION, ah for feck sakes, you mean you actually want something to change in the PS.

Not on your nelly. Only the Troika will wake us up out of this stupor. The lazy lead by the meek!