Saturday, July 18, 2009
LIES, damn lies and statistics have long been regarded as the great falsities, but one might also add bureaucrats distorting the national interest in their own personal interest. There was some surprise this week that the Government published the report of An Bord Snip Nua.
Politically, the move made a lot of sense, but the Government has not distinguished itself for either bravery or sensitivity.
Despite its much-heralded cuts in the past nine months, Government spending has actually gone up by 8.9%. It is currently spending €62bn, while it will only take in around €51bn, leaving the country €11bn worse off at the end of the year.
Public expenditure is simply out of control and we are grossly out of line with our commitments within the eurozone. This simply cannot continue without bankrupting the country.
Public sector pay now far exceeds that of the private sector. It was in order to bring about pay parity that benchmarking was introduced. The logical move would be to use benchmarking to bring public pay back in line with the private sector, but the people who were supposedly only looking for equity and fairness won’t hear of any readjustments.
Colm McCarthy’s group noted, for example, that there has been a disproportionate increase in the ratio of senior level grades within the public service. The percentage of those at middle to higher management levels in the civil service increased by 82% from 1997 to 2009 while the number of civil servants grew by only 27%. What they were doing was promoting each other and screwing the country. Now we have too many chiefs and not enough indians, so when they cut back it should be these latter-day chiefs and those who promoted them who should go first, not the people brought in at the lowest level who were possibly the only ones doing any actually work.
We have been hearing a lot about the pension levy lately, but little about the cost of funding public service pensions. The annual cost of purchasing a similar pension arrangement in the private sector would range from 27% of the annual salary in the case of the typical civil servant employed before 2004 to 31% for a teacher entitled to retire at age 55, to 48% in the case of a garda, and as high as 87% of the annual salary in the case of a High Court judge.
It should also be remembered that many of the pensions into which people in the private sector were paying were wiped out due in no small measure to the gross incompetence of the public service.
Curiously the Bord Snip report did not give any figure in the case of pensions that government ministers give themselves. They are allowed to collect their pensions while they are still in the Dáil. Those would be prohibitively expensive in the private sector. Finance Minister Brian Lenihan announced in his emergency budget in April that ministerial pensions being paid to sitting members were being discontinued. "We must lead by example," he told the Dáil.
But then the government made another of its U-turns and just asked those involved to suggest an appropriate amount by which their pensions should be cut. Former ministers who already enjoyed a Dáil salary of more than €100,000 were also drawing handsome pensions – in Bertie Ahern’s case, his pension was more than €110,000. After six weeks, barely half of the more than 30 sitting deputies with ministerial pensioners had bothered to reply.
Maybe that had something to do with why Bertie’s brother fared so dismally in finishing fifth in the recent by-election.
On that showing, Fianna Fáil would not win a seat in the constituency in a general election.
Implementing the suggestions of An Bord Snip Nua would require guts at the best of times, and it’s hard to see this Government screwing up the necessary courage. The level of squealing from vested interest groups could become deafening in the coming weeks and months.
The proposed cuts are so broad it should be easy to put together a coalition of vested interests that would terrify even the most courageous of governments. We are venturing into extremely dangerous territory, with the possibility that irresponsible elements will stir up civil unrest for their own sordid ends.
Outrage has already been expressed at the proposed 5% cut in social welfare payments. It is the kind of populist thing to side with the downtrodden, so it should be easy to rally the disgruntled elements against the welfare cuts.
Colm McCarthy argues that the 5% cut merely restores things in real terms to where they were last summer. There has already been a 2% fall in the cost of living this year, and there was a 3% increase in the social welfare payments, so the 5% cut would really leaving things where they were last year.
If that is not so, let’s hear those arguments. People should not allow those greedy hypocrites who helped to get us into this mess to hide behind a phoney concern for the poor. It is absurd to make welfare payments to well-to-do people in the form of children’s allowances. Some merely bank that money for foreign holidays – for which you are actually paying. There should be a real means test to ensure such welfare payments would only go to those who need them.
Sport is another area for which drastic cuts have been suggested, such as a €16.4m reduction in the Horse and Greyhound Fund.
Last week the Gaelic Players Association were demanding money from the Government for its players. Some of them may well be deserving of support. If so, the GAA should be paying them.
SOME rugby players are being paid handsomely as the game at the top level has become truly professional. Should the Government also fund rugby and soccer players? Irish soccer clubs cannot compete with the money being paid by English Premiership teams, so there could be an argument for the Government paying wages to keep top players in Ireland.
And what about golf? Padraig Harrington could not possibly make the kind of money that he makes on the international circuit, if he just played at home. Should the Government step in and pay leading golfers so they can stay and play in Ireland? We are almost bankrupt as it stands, so it would be utterly absurd that the Government take on the employment of golfers, rugby players, soccer players, or gaelic players. The decent thing would have been to tell the GPA straight out to forget about any payments from the national exchequer. But that has not been the Fianna Fáil way for years. They have bought off vested interests without regard for the national interest.
Another of the cuts proposed by Bord Snip Nua is the elimination of the Irish army equestrian team in order to save €1 million. Won’t that damage our national defences?
Many of the cuts proposed should be considered seriously. Laying off 17,000 public servants could easily be justified if they cut the real wasters – those who were dining and travelling for Ireland. Instead of last in, first out, they should select those with the highest expenses. That would save real money.
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