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Column Should the rich give back their benefits? No – it’s the wrong question.

This idea is a cover for the Government’s ineptitude, writes Aaron McKenna. Have we forgotten the point of social welfare?

IN A GOVERNMENT stuffed full of Benjamin Franklin disciples, no minister enjoys flying a kite more than Joan Burton. The Minister for Social Protection loves to enrage, scare and mystify us with proposals flown off the top of her grisly fortress in Dublin city center, and in the run up to this Budget, her €21billion Goliath is settling its beady eye on €2billion worth of child benefit.

Various unnammed spokespersons and anonymous sources have, through sheer coincidence, been suggesting ways and means to cut the bill, with the most original suggestion yet being that we should ask rich folk if they’d like to give their monthly stipend back. That kite was quickly retracted when the derisory reply came from the great unwashed that government is happy to take from the poor, why should it be politely asking the rich?

It’s a good question, and not without merit, but it is the wrong one to be asking of one of our biggest departments. The question is far too philosophical for the well insulated mandarins of government who are themselves, to employ something Samuel Beckett once said, the cream of Ireland – rich and thick.

The more prescient question is: Why is it we entrust a €21billion-a-year-spending department to people too feeble-minded – politicians and apparatchiks alike – to develop a proper, modern system for accomplishing their goals?

The aim of the welfare state is to prevent people starving, not to give an additional €140 a month to people who earn six figures for the pleasure of having children. This we all agree on, yet the back and forth and back and forth from this department – now under two governments – agonising over both the political and technical hurdles to reforming this wasteful spending in a time of thrift has been goading to watch.

‘Computers won’t talk’

“The computers in Revenue won’t talk to the computers in Social Protection,” we’re told by the minister, by the last minister and by various ever enduring senior civil servants. Well colour me blue, the computers don’t talk, can’t talk, and four years into the crisis ‘top people’ (as the Indiana Jones line goes) still haven’t managed to figure it out.

Meanwhile, in the real world, companies like Google and Apple keep doing their things (with offices in Ireland to boot); we found the God Particle; NASA landed the Curiosity Rover on Mars; and two Irish schoolboys are turning the world of online payments upside down and are on their way to running a billion-dollar company on the back of it. But, you know, them computers in the department are tricky fellas.

Not, in any event, that taxing the benefit is the smartest route to take in the first place. It just shows up the capacity of government for innovation that they’ve not figured it out yet.

If you step back and think about it, for government to pay you child benefit and later tax it is a multi-step process. Firstly, they tax your income. Secondly, they move the money around inside their departments. Thirdly, they pay you the child benefit. Fourthly, they’ll now tax you on the benefit. The water cycle works like that, but the difference is that there isn’t a bureaucrat on a good pensionable salary pushing buttons every step of the way when it rains.

Safety net

Committed socialists believe in a universal payment such as child benefit, for mumble-mumble some non-specific reason unrelated to votes. One Senator recently told me that an argument for it is that everyone who puts something into the social safety net should get something back out of it. This attitude is symptomatic of the rot in our welfare state, the purpose of which was lost beneath years of giveaway budgets paid for out of transitory property taxes by people who should have known better.

The thing we all get out of the social safety net is that it exists, so should we ever fall it will catch us. We should pray that we never need a cent from it, that our money will help those less fortunate but should we ourselves run into hard times – let’s say, by some improbable confluence of stupidity, something terrible happened to the entire economy – it’s there for us.

You can’t have more people on the wagon than pulling it, not for long anyway. Yet there are 600,000 families in receipt of child benefit. This universal payment probably does plenty to aid child poverty by papering over the problem, and by diverting cash from the most needy.

What we ought to have is a proper payment that is given based on means and needs, not on whether it’s your first child or the unlucky third one. We should accomplish this by ending child benefit as we know it and make people apply for a new benefit, aimed to help the needy, with stricter means tests. The department already processes paperwork from families every few months to prove their children are still eligible for the existing benefit.

Army of people

Once again, the resourceful bods at the department tell us that would be a quite intensive effort. Again, however, they try and construct the most difficult route to success so that they can shy from taking it. Make the people come to you, so that folks will de-select themselves because they’re ineligible – like those €100,000 a year families (there’s 115,000 people earning over that amount, though we don’t know how many families. But lets be generous and say that 20 per cent of the work is done and dusted).

If processing all that paperwork takes a lot of effort, get creative. Call Google. Or just hire a bunch of temps for a few months (the department already has a fairly substantial army of people on its books it could hire). The point is to make savings over many years, and make child welfare payments fairer and more useful at achieving the core goal of welfare.

Of course, upsetting the apple cart and making everyone apply would be politically unpalatable. It’s a chief perk of being a politician that you get to spend other people’s money in stupid ways to maintain your own popularity.

Even the limits proposed are political sops. €100,000 a year is a nice round number, just like 100,000 new jobs. But a married couple with children, earning €50,000 a year each, are taking home around €5,856 a month after tax as it is – why shouldn’t the limit be lower, and then raised according to the number of children you have? As things sound today, if that family earns €99,000 they’ll get their €140 a month for their child. That doesn’t sound very logical.

The Department of Social Protection is one of our biggest and most important. What it does affects the lives of our most vulnerable citizens. Its policy making is haphazard, and its capability to deliver innovative solutions to the problems thrown at it in the past years has been negligible.

Yet here we are, with the same old tenured civil servants running it and the same old ministerial and political cover sought at the cost of delivering real value for money and programs that make a real change for the better.

Sounds like business as usual in Irish government land.

Aaron McKenna is a businessman and a columnist for TheJournal.ie. You can find out more about him at aaronmckenna.com or follow him on Twitter @aaronmckenna.

Read: More columns from Aaron McKenna on TheJournal.ie>

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60 Comments
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    Mute Joe Sixtwo
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    Aug 18th 2012, 7:56 AM

    This government is simply not up to the job in hand. Any class of clown can generate revenue for a short time by inventing taxes, cutting benefits and increasing income tax.

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:06 AM

    I love the solution – Call Google! The good Google Fairy will wave her magic wand and all will be rosy in the garden. A manifestation of a Disneyland education methinks!

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    Mute Dexter Gordon
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:10 AM

    So what would you guys do if you ran the country?

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:28 AM

    My first decree as Taoiseach would be to send any eejit who advocates fairytale-esque solutions back to school! They will only graduate when they have attained a sufficient understanding of the real world. That way we might get good governance because if people were able to see where real problems lay then they would not be so easily sidelined. Most commentators today prefer using prejudices in place of thinking. Why? It saves energy and obliterates the need to spend all those wasted years getting an education!

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:08 AM

    Poor Samuel Becket being made to suffer the ignominy of being quoted out of context. When he said “the cream of Ireland were rich and thick” he was referring to the students of Trinity College Dublin who got into college not through ability but by having a wealthy background. The corollary from the author’s misuse of the quote suggests that he is poor and smart. However his many gaffs and expressions of anti-Irish prejudice demonstrate that quality thinking is not present in these rants.

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:17 AM

    Charles – The google thing was a quip. I could spend hours talking about API’s, digitisation tools for paper records etc… The underlying point being, if it were a commercial tech company that had a business idea on the back of needing to get 600,000 family records parsed, it’d get done, possibly from a garage with some coders working at night and certainly in less than 4 years.

    Samuel Beckett was indeed referring to something different, which is why I coined the phrase from him and repurposed it. As for my anti Irish sentiment, I’m not sure where you’re getting that. But anyways, red herrings and white elephants flying all over the place…

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:34 AM

    Yes you “repurposed it” (out of context) to turn it into an anti Irish comment! I rest my case on that one. (and I will go back through you past articles an pull out more examples if you so desire.)

    I remind you of IBM’s attempt to make a website for the HSE! It defeats your argument once again.

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:51 AM

    Bad procurement processes lead to bad outcomes in most IT projects. Apologists for the “we can’t do anything” brigade in govt seem to ignore plenty of organisations turning the world upside down and inside out through successful innovation in IT development.

    As for Beckett, that was anti politician and anti senior civil service stupidity. Is it un-Irish to criticise?

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:31 AM

    Balderdash. It is legacy issues that are the cause of most IT project failures as FISP, PPARS, Hershey Foods Corp., Snap-On Inc., Greyhound Lines Inc. all attest. These failures had thousands of professional coders backed up by gigantic Information Technology companies. If one were to study these failures one would not be so quick to call in ‘big hitters’ like Google.

    Your article alludes to concept of interoperability between diverse IT systems. This is a major issue within the IT industry and is a very difficult problem to solve even for those outside the Irish Civil service. For example, the U.S. automotive industry conservatively estimates that imperfect interoperability costs them at least $1.5 billion dollars per year.

    An IBM & Accenture web portal project for the HSE failed in 2005. They cited incompatible systems as the main reason for failure. The project cost the state €3million and the state got nothing in return. Further evidence that calling in the private “big hitters” is a dreamer’s solution already proven to be a fallacy.

    p.s I never mentioned anything about being un-Irish (whatever that is). Anti-Irish is a totally different concept.

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:39 AM

    It’s not balderdash. There are many problems with many IT projects, but chief among them is a client who doesn’t know what they’ve got or what they want.

    We could go in circles on this, so I’ll leave with a final word to circle back on the point I made in the article: Why is it that government seems only able most of the time to tell us something can’t work? The can’t do attitude of government is lazy and not good enough.

    As for me being “anti-Irish”, I’m sorry you think that. I’m not. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here or doing other things arguing and working for a better Ireland. I love my country from the bottom of my heart, and I hate to see it run by donkeys.

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    Mute Damocles
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:03 AM

    The biggest flaws in most failed IT projects are bad management and scope creep.

    Mind you, what do I know? I’ve only got 20 years in the business.

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:05 AM

    The simple fact of the matter is that an IT project of this magnitude will cost hundreds of millions of Euro. (Have we got it to spare?) Furthermore only one in five IT projects actually succeeds worldwide! Now look that up and come back with a better analysis.

    There is a management systems failure within the Irish civil service, of that there is no doubt. Calling them donkeys is a poor analysis and it will never solve the problems. Finding true causes is the first step in the proposal of quality solutions. Fundamental attribution errors are the oxygen of ignorance and are incompetent at problem solving.

    Irish: to be born on a particular rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That very fact makes all people born on it (you included) thick drunken Micks as evinced from your article last week and before!

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:08 AM

    Hundreds of millions you say! Sounds a lot like what I referred to above – finding the hardest route to success to justify not taking it.

    Way to miss the point of last weeks column.

    Enjoy your weekend Charles.

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:14 AM

    Yeah, we just need to sneak a few dollars away from the American Space programme and we will have the Right Stuff! Rockets will fly, spacemen will space walk and we will all have a brilliant weekend! Thanks Elvis.

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:20 AM

    Why is the Information Technology business so full of bad managers and scope creepers?
    They have had Damallchese for 20 years!

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    Mute medred
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    Aug 18th 2012, 1:10 PM

    Sir Charles your carriage awaits

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 1:34 PM

    medred, you are such a good servant. Now lie down so I can clean my shoes on your back.

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    Mute David Dancey
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    Aug 18th 2012, 3:34 PM

    I don’t honestly think that it would take hundreds of millions of Euro but I think we can all agree that it would cost something and that it would take some time to deliver (shouldn’t be four years but even those heroic coders in garages have to sleep sometime!). Perhaps part of the problem is the expectations we have of government. Quite often we expect things to be done yesterday and for free. The civil service, worried about failure, overbudgets and allows projects to grow unrealistically and failure inevitably ensues. I think one of the triumphs of the private sector is that often they are more realistic about projects.

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 5:52 PM

    It is easy to jump to the conclusion that the private sector is better at Information Technology than the public sector but overwhelming evidence suggests otherwise. Or perhaps you mean by “more realistic about projects” is that they seldom fail. Wrong again I’m afraid.

    London stock exchange cancelled a stock settlement system – $600 million loss. Other private firms include, (not an exhaustive list) Budget Rent a Car $165 million loss, Avis rent a car $65 million, Ford Motor Company $400 million, KMart 130 million AT&T Wireless $100 million, Irish Credit Unions $107 million. Toyota recalled 160,000 of its Prius due to software error. The list is endless.

    We currently have 16 government departments most with different business requirements and 350,000 employees serving 5 million customers. The big elephant in the room is backward compatibility and guaranteeing the semi automated process of data migration without any data loss and preservation of billions of electronic records. What would be the cost of doing this manually?

    Assuming a person working at flat out capacity checking records (4 minutes max) it will take them 278 days to check a million records. Remember a billion is a thousand million! RBS lost a couple of hours of transactions on its IT systems and look how long it took them to process these manually. Not to mention the £1.5bn the error cost.

    And I have not even mentioned the cost of software licenses. Small businesses have to pay in the region of €1000 per user pa. A single ERP license costs a firm $1,200 per user pa. Also there are many many other costs too that are not visible to the unskilled eye. Hence my estimate of hundreds of millions is likely to be conservative.

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    Mute Niall Boylan @ Night
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:01 PM

    Couldn’t agree more . The middle class are propping up the country. Chasing the rich or spending money on means testing child benefit of family’s over 100 k will yield very little and is just being mooted to keep all the armchair politicians happy.

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    Mute medred
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:21 PM

    No one wants to hear your opinion Niall
    I have heard your show; pure exploitation of the mentally insane

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    Mute OU812
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:51 AM

    Go back to having a book & picking it up at the post office weekly.

    That’s the way it worked when we were kids.

    There’d be a huge decrease in payments then.

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    Mute Stephen Cahill
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:11 AM

    I totally agree that it should be means tested and to simply use the excuse that the computers in the revenue don’t work with the ones in the social department just smacks of the usual laziness in our civil service. People on very low incomes do need this payment but surely even if a family is earning even over 80,000 a month they wouldn’t need it as much as a family
    Who only has one person working and the other un-employed. This government don’t have a clue what there doin and are like headless chickens tryin to sort out the mess the previous government left us

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    Mute tomnewnewman.org
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:15 AM

    Any change that makes it even harder for job creators to compete with welfare is not good.

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    Mute Eddie Barrett
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:28 AM

    Surely means testing – the same way as every other entitlement is decided, is the only way to go with Child Benefit ?

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    Mute Sean O'Keeffe
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:35 AM

    “The first rule of economics is that there is an infinite number of desires chasing a finite number of goods, services and resources. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.”

    Thomas Sowell

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    Mute Barry Lee
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:18 AM

    Excellent article. Agree with all the rant except the ‘unlucky third child’ comment.

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:20 AM

    In what sense? I was referring to the third child who has had child benefit cut and cut for no apparent reason. Minister Lenihan cut it, and Noonan asked him “What do you have against third children?” When he came to office, Noonan cut the benefit for third children again.

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    Mute Ryan Allen
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    Aug 20th 2012, 11:14 PM

    Yes, but as a businessperson surely you understand the concept of economies of scale. Clothes and equipment from children one and two should should bring the cost of rearing the third child down.

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    Mute Eoin Norris
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:19 AM

    I detest the way that Aaron, jabbers on with his over-written prose and cliched ad hominens. Universal benefits do actually make sense, social welfare is accepted more if people universally see benefits. In fact that is true of high taxation, the Swedes accept it more than us because they see more benefits and better public infrastructure.

    This benefit is a transfer from the childless to parents. Its one of those benefits you pay in at one part of your life, when childless, and get paid out in others – when a parent.That’s ok with me, and I am childless. They are hardly the only “universal” benefits. Pensions are a transfer from the young to the old. Health payments are a transfer from the healthy to the sick. We don’t cap payments based on wealth or other income in either case, well not for contributory pensions.

    Be careful about targeting the rich for benefits cut off. The definition of rich tends to get redefined over time to include the middle. Ireland used to have a 65% tax on the rich which was eventually paid by a significant part of the PAYE sector, and very few of the rich All that you have to do is not index link the cut off.

    There is also, of course, the ability of the self employed to be a bit more creative with their expenses than the PAYE sector.

    Middle income PAYE workers supporting universal benefit cuts are like Turkeys cheering next year’s Christmas.

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    Mute Sean O'Keeffe
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:42 AM

    “Sweden is still offering good social welfare, but more efficiently and sensibly and increasingly through the private sector. This model of falling taxes and public spending is rapidly proliferating from the north of Europe toward the south, and the northern Europeans have little tolerance for the statist conservatism and fiscal negligence of Southern Europe. Nor do the Swedes understand the fiscal irresponsibility of the U.S., while they still admire American research and innovation.”
    Anders Aslund

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    Mute Bilbo Baggins
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:43 AM

    I’m not 100% on your first sentence. But the rest of your comment is imho one of the great things about comments sections , Deliberated , constructive and god forbid sensible ideas, I totally agree.
    So on that note we can expect none of it to happen ..

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:58 AM

    If you want to move to the Swedish system that’s another conversation. They have a system that works for them, but it’s not a matter of a few different policies and we’re running the same – it’s almost as completely different a shift in attitude, outlook and structure of society as moving from communism to capitalism as from our type of state to theirs.

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    Mute Gretta FitzGerald
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:12 AM

    And people like me who had the courage to set up a business and collect vat and pay employers prsi etc can get nothing from The system into which I paid for more than 30 years. The only thing I am entitled to is child benefit, definitely can’t afford to lose it

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    Mute Sean O'Keeffe
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:25 AM

    Sweden is no longer the socialist wet dream and has not been for some time. Currently, the Swedish government is actively reducing the size and cost of it’s public sector. Those that can afford it contribute to the cost of their childrens education. While the Swedes themselves have come realise the fallacy of their socialist model.
    “The [currently in opposition] Social Democrats [who were the architects of Sweden’s 20th century planned welfare state] haven’t only joined the free-market consensus, but seem to attack the current government from the right, pushing for a better business environment. Gone are demands for the restoration of social benefits. Opinion polls have rewarded the Social Democrats for their right turn.”
    Anders Aslund

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    Mute Charles Windsor
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    Aug 18th 2012, 1:48 PM

    The wet dream is based on high tax. Now why are the Swedish fiscal system advocators not arguing strongly for increasing tax? Incomplete and incompetent analysis “proliferating from the north” is no doubt responsible.

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    Mute Sean O'Keeffe
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    Aug 18th 2012, 5:17 PM

    The Swedes have discovered, to their cost, that high tax/high spending government results in low growth/high unemployment. They are now moving away from this.
    Why would anyone advocate such a system for Ireland?
    ” But Socialism was fashionable in post-War Europe and Sweden was not immune. The 1970s were a decade of radical government intervention in society and in markets, during which Sweden doubled its overall tax burden, socialized a slew of industries, re-regulated its markets, expanded its public systems, and shuttered its borders. In 1970, Sweden had the world’s fourth-highest GDP per capita. By 1990, it had fallen 13 positions. In those 20 years, real wages in Sweden increased by only one percentage point.

    Remnants of its earlier success remained, and the idea of following “the Swedish model” had already caught hold around the world. Fine, except the roots of this success were confused with Stockholm’s more recent big-government policies, which in fact were destroying the country’s enviable prosperity. This confusion also played into domestic debates, stalling reform for too long.

    By the late 1980s, though, Sweden had started de-regulating its markets once again, decreased its marginal tax rates, and opted for a sound-money, low-inflation policy. In the early 1990s, the pace quickened, and most markets except for labor and housing were liberalized. The state sold its shares in a number of companies, granted independence to its central bank, and introduced school vouchers that improved choice and competition in education. Stockholm slashed public pensions and introduced private retirement schemes, keeping the system demographically sustainable.”
    John Munkhammar, Swedish MP, Moderate Party.

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    Mute Sean O'Keeffe
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:36 AM

    Good suggestion.

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    Mute John O'Mahony
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:19 AM

    The best quote from this article is

    “It’s a chief perk of being a politician that you get to spend other people’s money in stupid ways to maintain your own popularity.”

    In fact one could safely say that a politician’s ONLY skill is being elected — and re-elected

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    Mute Terry Turner
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    Aug 18th 2012, 8:40 AM

    Should have stopped after “lot”.

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    Mute Paddy Looney
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:37 AM

    ‘the computers don’t talk to each other’ is actually a serious problem with no quick fix. Suppose we do ‘call Google’ and they say, you’ll need to throw out one of those systems entirely and get in another one. At a cost of hundreds of millions. What then? Remember e-voting machines.

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:55 AM

    Considering the DSP spends €21bn a year, €2bn in child benefit, procurement of a new IT system might not be a bad idea. Trouble is it’d probably be the same “top people” as fumbled other govt IT projects to manage.

    That’s your fundamental problem – incompetence in government. Government, it seems, finds it difficult to deliver innovative solutions. Meanwhile, the world beyond seems to do it every day.

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    Mute Kevin Lynch
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:02 AM

    I have to say I completely agree, the lack of innovation with regards to this issue is astounding! If everyone else can see an alternative that is at least somewhat more logical I don’t understand how the government can’t !! Anyway really great article !!

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    Mute Mandy Seiler
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:24 AM

    Brilliant article.

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    Mute Tom Newell
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    Aug 18th 2012, 12:57 PM

    The government and unions don’t want modernized systems talking to each other between the likes of welfare and revenue etc……why because it would infringe on croke park and finally expose the myth that we need so many people working in places like social protection and revenue and the department of finance. I will give a great example of a friend of mine who was made redundant in 09 and went back to education by 2011 he was to be assessed to move to jobseekers allowance and when the person from welfare came to his house the first question he asked him was what have you been doing since 2009?……he was shocked to learn my friend was in full time education as there was no record with him showing my friend had done anything since he went on the dole in 2009. Now in all fairness if thats going on with one person how many more do ya think this is happening to because the records system is so outdated in welfare they still use cards and pages and plastic bags to hold records. My guess is if a real audit was done in places like welfare the savings from new computer systems doing the jobs of probably 3 people and the wages saved would be vast…….but we all know this government haven’t balls to attack anyone except those like welfare and low income people cos there not liable to cos hassle

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    Mute Smiley
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:32 AM

    Hey, Aaron. You’ve stolen my ideas I posted a couple of weeks ago. What gives?

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    Mute Aaron McKenna
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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:56 AM

    Uhh, no conscious plagiarism I swear! I guess great minds simply think alike ;-) Seriously though, I think the ideas are plain enough that a lot of us are coming to them.

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    Aug 18th 2012, 4:37 PM

    Maybe, since great minds do think alike, we should be hired as government advisors. We’d do well. :D

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    Mute John O'Mahony
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    Aug 18th 2012, 7:38 PM

    My Ma used to say a long time ago : Great minds think alike but fools seldom differ;`¬)

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    Aug 18th 2012, 7:43 PM

    My dad used to say the same. So who are the fools? The seldom differing bureaucrats? ;-)

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    Mute Brian Walsh
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    Aug 18th 2012, 1:38 PM

    I don’t always agree with Aaron McKenna but with this article I do, you have to admit our government have no problem taking anything they want from every poor Joe Soap, but when it comes to the rich they propose to ask them to give it back. If this isn’t one rule for the poor and another for the rich what is? What happens if a rich family decided not to give it back, just like a poor family may decide not to pay their Household Tax? While one would be fine, the other would be fined.
    And he’s right about the computers “not talking”, if this was a big business, and surely running a country can’t get much bigger, then the various computer systems after several years would be communicating to each other. Either the in house techies would be given a time frame in which to sort it out or the job would be outsourced to someone who can do it within a reasonable time. Rocket science it isn’t.

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    Mute SeanNorris
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    Aug 18th 2012, 9:57 AM

    With all of the talk of means testing and setting it up there is a far simpler solution. Subject the payment to a withholding tax which gets refunded once you make a tax return and your income does not exceed a certain figure. If you can prove that your ongoing underlying income is less than this figure then you could apply for an exemption from the withholding tax.

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    Mute Caroline Locke
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    Aug 18th 2012, 3:11 PM

    YES they should.

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    Aug 18th 2012, 1:20 PM

    I’m not sure I totally agree with all your point, but I do think it’s good that we’re having a conversation about what the purpose of child benefit is (you seem to very much see it as protection against child poverty, rather than the government trying to reduce the costs of raising children). Not sure I totally agree that is what it should be, but very logical if you proceed on that view.

    What I would like to see addressed more in these discussions, however, is the lifeline that child benefit often provides for mothers in abusive relationships (even wealthy women who have no control over marital finances.) Obviously policy can’t be totally based around this, but it would be nice if various solutions did consider this point.

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    Mute Sandra Murphy
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    Aug 18th 2012, 7:00 PM

    Agree. There are many mums whose husbands are extremely wealthy but have no control over how that wealth is spent. Deciding how to spend Children’s allowance may be the only financial independence they have.

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    Aug 18th 2012, 11:25 PM

    I don’t like this floated idea that abused women’s only source of finance is childrens allowance. For 1 I don’t think it’s a big proportion. Secondly our message to these women if they’re out there shouldn’t be…give you a small amount of cash, just enough to bear living there and stay there. It should be ‘get out, stay out and phone 999′. Even more so if you’ve children. And who the hell says it’s women who get child benefit, lots of families use the man’s acc or a joint acc. Let’s dispel that myth or at least come up with a more real bloody answer to it.

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    Aug 19th 2012, 10:17 AM

    Child benefit is one of the few benefits that, unless you opt out is paid to the woman. And frankly, any research on women in abusive relationships is that telling them, “no, you must leave NOW or else”. Non directive services which help women do what they feel is best for them (and for a lot of women, for a long time, that is minimising risk), is important. If you’re telling women “leave now and call 999″, you’re not reaching a lot of them. I do this for a living!

    Domestic violence is a lot more common than you think, so it’s a substantial minority. And should the whole policy be based around it? No, but I’d like to see it addressed in these proposals and an alternative proposed.

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    Aug 20th 2012, 12:22 AM

    Child benefit is not always paid to the woman. It is paid to whatever bank account you put down. You baby is registered, social welfare then send you a form, you put the bank details on the form.

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    Aug 20th 2012, 11:51 PM

    And for many women, it is their source of income. UCD has done a lot of research around this.

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    Mute Kevin Carroll
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    Aug 18th 2012, 10:37 AM

    i think, people with earnings above a certain ammount, say 70000 should Be compelled by law to Pay child Benefit to their children by having it taken out of their Pay packet directly and put in a Post Office savings Account in the childs Name. the cash can then Be either claimed when the child is 18 or withdrawn by the parents as Seen Fit.

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