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Unions opposed to cuts are subject to law, says KennyTeacher unions and others that remain opposed to €300m public sector pay cut proposals will be subjected to laws cutting higher salaries and other work changes, Enda Kenny said yesterday.
UCC plan will save taxpayers millions University College Cork intends to be largely self-funding within five years, saving the Irish taxpayer millions of euro a year.
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Woolwich terror killing: Security services face probeThe British parliament is to investigate if security services could have done more to prevent the murder of a soldier hacked to death in a London street after it emerged that his suspected killers were known to intelligence officers.
Woolwich killing: Further arrests as spotlight turns on security servicesBritish police arrested two more people yesterday in a hunt for accomplices of two British men of Nigerian descent accused of hacking a soldier to death on a London street in revenge for wars in Muslim countries.
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Noonan examining ways to capitalise banks It is believed the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan told the IMF that he will look to Contingent Convertible Capital (CoCo) Notes if the banks need additional capital buffers following the stress tests.
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The magic is in the anticipationULSTER SFC QUARTER-FINAL:Donegal v Tyrone For too long, we've been decrying the anti-climactic starts to thevarious provincial championships. Now we have a genuine no-holds barred contest in Ballybofey.
O’Brien out for final as Schmidt takes issue with Gatland Joe Schmidt has opted against speculating whether Sean O'Brien will miss the opening weeks of the British and Irish Lions tour after omitting the injured flanker from his squad of 23 for today's RaboDirect Pro12 decider.
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A woman of mettle: how Iron Lady rose to powerFirst volume of Margaret Thatcher's authorised biography is predictably flattering, but not a hagiography, says Shaun Connolly
Best of the Week's TV (Saturday, May 25 - Friday 31)Highlights include Colin Stafford Johnson's new series on the Shannon, and highly-rated new spy drama The Americans.
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Banking pantomime must come to an end
By Joe Gill
Parts of the commentary on the economy are now reaching the proportions of a pantomime.
In this play the baddies are a race known as bankers who are chased around the stage by do-gooders dressed up as suave commentators and certain media observers.They carry the bats used to bash the bankers and put them in the pigeonholes that suit our moods.
Instead of thinking about bankers as ordinary humans trying to work earnestly and support families let’s just pitch them on the heap marked “unworthy”.
I was thinking about this last week on a visit to my local Ulster Bank branch. It was a torrid sight, with enraged customers getting stuck in to young tellers who were doing their best to explain the consequences of an IT catastrophe.
No matter that those young bankers were probably on salaries that had been cut, pensions reduced, and working in a branch probably earmarked for closure.
Nope, for now they are just more of the pantomime bankers that all of us like to beat up on and this IT debacle was just another good excuse to take them out for a beating.
I don’t like the generalities that sweep across any public debates about various pieces of Irish life: Bankers are all a disgrace; priests are child abusers; politicians are corrupt; businesspeople are snake oil sales merchants.
It’s a nice, neat classification that thinks in black and white, and helps shape a simpler view of the world. But it is profoundly misplaced.
For sure, there are institutional failures in large organisational structures that bestride our economies.
Banks were allowed to mash together bog-standard retail banking with a complex and highly charged investment banking ethos that corrupted large parts of the financial services sector.
The fault for that outcome does not, however, rest with the foot soldiers. It lies instead at the top of the tree.
Political leaders now have a huge role to play in shaping the financial system in a way that supports the recovery in our economy while ensuring a safe financial system that respects the integrity of those who work in it.
That implies;
(1) building systems that guarantee the banks cannot be corrupted by their political masters;
(2) creating retail banks that cannot be contaminated by an investment banking culture, and;
(3) giving those retail banks the oxygen needed in capital to stimulate lending, a lifeblood in any market economy.
In this new world the banks left in Ireland may be boring but safe entities in which people can work with dignity and respect. That might stop the caricature circus that currently exists.
One of the great dangers we are creating as we navigate through this banking restructuring is the risk of producing a new breed of corruption.
Once banks are owned by politicians the temptation to twist bank policies in support of the agendas of individual ministers is very high.
The chance of turning that into another raft of money-driven corruption in years to come is pronounced.
It will require robust regulators, well resourced forensic police officers, an independent and analytical media, and politicians with true integrity to combat this risk.
Can anyone assure you or I that such a collection of assets will be formed while managing the ongoing crisis that wraps around all our lives?
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