A rampant sense of entitlement: The malign force driving inequality

IT might be as naive as asking why Iceland — population 330,000 — jailed so many bankers and we jailed so few to suggest that the tit-for-tat sense of entitlement so embedded in our society has become a driver of inequality, the rawest, ugliest expression of greed and the greatest impediment to reform. 

Despite that naivety surely it is time to discuss this malignant force before, if it has not already, fundamentally changes the character of this small Republic?

Examples are myriad. This week the Oireachtas PAC considers how well or otherwise third-level institutions use public resources. They will hear of top ups to salaries outside Department of Education policy. This practice became normalised and no longer provokes the usual but shabby “to-compete-with-the-private-sector” defence. The PAC may discuss public sector double-jobbing while a one-salary edict was in place. It might discuss hidden, unreported funding, self-aggrandising portraits and retirement packages but it is unlikely that it will look at golden handshakes in a way that reflects a study by the Association of Pension Trustees that shows how State employees’ pensions are valued by the Revenue Commissioners at considerably less for tax purposes than identical pensions in the private sector. Before it moves away from third-levels institutions PAC might even, finally, get a satisfactory explanation about how the €63m sale of a company midwifed at Waterford Institute of Technology was worth only €1.3m to the institution.