HSE payments - New poor are paying the price

IS there no end to the gross excesses of secret golden handshakes and pension pots in the public service?

With the country broke, the economy in tatters and families struggling to survive, people have every right to be incensed at the latest revelations showing the extent to which secret deals behind closed doors are contributing to the ever growing gap between haves and have-nots in Ireland.

As the latest disclosures show, a dwindling number of beleaguered tax payers are supporting a new elite from the upper echelons of the public sector. For the former group, the economic crisis is characterised by severe austerity, punitive cuts and hidden taxes. For the latter element, retirement has become a gravy train.

Thanks to deals like the costly Croke Park Agreement, accepted by the last government in typical consensus fashion — it would wrong to describe it as “hammered out” with the unions — the ship of state resembles Yes Minister, a political satire that depicted British government ministers as puppets of the civil service, a mirror image of Ireland, perhaps.

Central to the latest controversy, senior managers from the upper echelons of the HSE received €7m in golden handshakes and since leaving the HSE have received €7.5m more in pensions. Underlining the glaring inequity of this situation and compounding the degree of political ineptitude by failing to curb such excesses, the deals were clinched when the economic crisis had begun to unfold. Even though public monies were involved, the matter was shrouded in secrecy. Thus, documents had to be secured by the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act.

Financial data uncovered includes golden handshakes and pension pots doled out to 29 senior health service officials between late 2005, as the sun was setting on the so-called Celtic Tiger era, and the autumn of 2009, by which time NAMA had been created and the second bailout guaranteed. The recipients were all above hospital consultant or senior management level and among the highest paid officials in the system.

The latest scenario underlines the gross disparity of a system that has deepened the yawning gulf between the country’s new elite, among them our highly paid politicians, and the tens of thousands who are now classified as Ireland’s new poor. In a catastrophic social upheaval a new poverty class has emerged encompassing people that once regarded themselves as middle class — men and women who took pride in their jobs but now rank among the long-term unemployed.

In contrast with the highly paid bureaucratic elite, members of the new poor are struggling to make ends meet. Drowning in mortgage arrears, they find it increasingly hard to put food on the table and are barely able to pay for the education of their children. They are the real victims of this debacle. The time has come to redefine the jaded pledge given in the 1937 Constitution that all the children of Ireland be treated equally. It has never been fulfilled by any government and is honoured more in the breach than in the observance.