Its a starting point. A saving of 10% from staff cuts is the same as a 10% saving from pay cuts from the exchequer's point of view. As I've said many times on various threads before, it is better to get rid of surplus employees than to have the remainder of the workforce take a pay cut in order to keep these surplus employees on the payroll doing nothing.
I actually believe that there is more scope for savings from staff cuts than pay cuts. With pay cuts, politically speaking, you're not going to be able to go beyond single digit percentages for most, particularly since a 7.5% pay cut has already taken place. There are politically inspired agencies where you could cut 100% of the staff without any impact on public services. In admin heavy local politics dominated organisations such as the HSE, you could easily cut around 20% of the staff (mostly on the admin side - hangover from health boards e.g.the plethora of "assistant national directors" and their staff) and have little or no impact on services.
