Bonuses to top-earning ‘experts’ unacceptable

We’re constantly told that if we pay peanuts we are only going to get monkeys.

To most of us that means that if we want the experts, aka people who can actually do the job, we must pay for them.

However, when we get them, we should expect them to be able to do the job without any further props, including unjustified bonuses for themselves and consultants to do the work.

If reports are anything to go by we have an awful lot of highly-paid people at the top of the public sector. We even have “advisers” who were parachuted into government environs and are partly running the country. If that is the case, why then does the public sector still appear to be awash with consultants?

Rightly or wrongly, consultants do seem to have a bad name. There are many jokes about consultants but one of the simple descriptions of a consultant is “someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time”. That would be grand if it were always true. However, Merrill Lynch getting paid €7.3m by the Irish government for consulting work in 2008 and 2009 when they totally underestimated the cost of Ireland’s bust by an incredible €47bn does make one wonder.

In the case of newly minted Irish Water, consultants apparently were and are being used extensively costing somewhere north of €85m.

At least some of this work should and could have been undertaken by its newly- hired and well-paid staff, some of whom came from very senior positions in the public sector. Yet employing consultants to do most of the work did not stop Irish Water from raising the issue of paying sizeable bonuses to its staff for all their efforts.

To make matters worse we now hear that the Central Bank is considering pay increases and bonuses for its employees, as well as other “reward models”, whatever they might be.

As some sort of a sop, bank officials stated that the review would be part of a larger review of the bank and of its internal structures and processes.

But wait for it — the review is being undertaken by an internal committee and “external expertise” might be used. I’m sorry if I appear cynical but asking an insider to decide if he deserves more money is akin to giving a child the keys of a sweet shop — that’s even a Christmas that a turkey would vote for.

The bank has advised that the review will be complete by 2015 and the recommendations will follow through on a phased basis. To make matters worse, we the tax payer even through our elected politicians, have no say whether it gets paid or not. Now whose fault is that? Forgive me if I’m wrong but it sounds like the decisions have already been taken on what, how much and when.

So what’s next — public sector bonuses rearing their ugly heads yet again?

As a country we are borrowing huge amounts of money each and every year, and will be doing so for the foreseeable future, just to stand still. Anti-poverty groups St Vincent De Paul and Social Justice Ireland have warned that those set to receive the planned extra funds have no right to benefit financially until the people worst affected by the recession recover.

It is fair to say that there really is no case for paying bonuses to highly-paid individuals if their only apparent skills are that of managing consultants.

The ‘big’ banks are already making noises about paying bonuses. Pre-2008 we had loads of bankers on big money and telephone number bonuses and look what happened. If their employees cannot make do with their current large salaries and do the job they are paid for, let them walk. Perhaps they might then share the lot of the tens of thousands who have had to emigrate.