My alternative approach to public service reform

PERVERSELY, your reporter chose to write a “review” of my speech to the MacGill Summer School as if it were a boxing match rather than tell your readers what I said in the presentation (‘Union fails to make an impact against cuts’, July 22).

So your readers will not be aware that my presentation was neither a “defence” of the public service nor an argument against the need to balance exchequer spending and income.

Rather, it was an outline of a serious alternative approach to public service reform to that set out in the McCarthy report. I argued, in some detail, that the apparently conflicting objectives of citizens’ demands for better services, Government demands for reduced spending and public service workers’ demands for pay protection and job security could be accommodated if real reform was devolved to local levels where services are actually delivered.

I said that public servants and their unions were up for a rapid transformation in our public services through co-operation and agreement, but that conflict was inevitable if the Government chose the alternative road of compulsory redundancies and imposed cuts in pay and pensions.

And I pointed out that the people who use and deliver public services did not create the current crisis, which is a result of the collapse in revenue caused by misguided taxation policy and unacceptable practices in banking, finance, property and construction.

It’s no wonder your reporter was unimpressed if he was expecting a boxing match between me and Colm McCarthy rather than a serious contribution to a debate that affects everyone on this island.

Any of your readers who are interested in this important debate can read the speech at www.impact.ie.

Peter McLoone

General Secretary

IMPACT

Nerney’s Court

Dublin 1