Completely incorrect. Civil servants have no choice in the matter - pension contributions are deducted from salary.
now, instead of moaning, some positive ideas to improve public services please!
Whether they're public servants, civil servants or private sector workers on a looooong-term contract for Govt body, they ALL get paid from the exchequer purse.
Stop making sense! Next you will be saying that socialist collectivism is a bad thing and that the individual is more important than the state. If you had your way we would all be judged and valued based on how smart we were and how hard we worked. If that happened we'd have a fair society and a successful economy. Where do you get off?
Source please?Well the big news is that most Irish people don't work in IT or for big Multinationals. Most of them work for small businesses
I do.I don't know anyone working in the private sector whose pension is majority funded by their employer.
Indeed, there are frequent reports of waste and error in the public sector, which the right-wing media delight in giving maximum coverage. And of course, there are frequent reports of waste and error in the private sector. Almost weekly, we have reports of how the financial institutions made 'errors' in applying fees to customers. We get reports of delayed and abandoned ICT projects in both public and private sectors. Of course, many of the problems in private organisations remain private, as we don't have a C&AG which investigates AIB and NTL etc.Every week we hear another story about gross waste in the public sector (and you, in the real world that includes the HSE).
Last week it was the report on patient abuse in the nursing home in the phoenix park that took TWO YEARS and we not find that they didn't interview everyone so they have to start again. If the person in charge of compiling the report didn't follow procedure they should be sacked. If their boss didn't put a procedure in place then they should be sacked. But it won't happen, it never does.
Please mention one union policy which seeks to redistribute wealth from the poor to the middle classes.Their policy of lobbying for wealth redistribution from the poor to the protected parts of the middle classes is the most cynical sell-out of any supposedly socialist group I have ever heard of.
We have a public sector that is unaccountable, inefficient and overstaffed which, for the most part, delivers a shoddy service to the public which it is laughable meant to serve. In that context, and taking their very short week and fantastic terms and conditions into account, I consider them to be overpaid. No off topic ramblings about bank managers will change this view.
Do I want a public service? Yes, but I want one that serves the public, not itself.
Purple said:Their policy of lobbying for wealth redistribution from the poor to the protected parts of the middle classes is the most cynical sell-out of any supposedly socialist group I have ever heard of.
Please mention one union policy which seeks to redistribute wealth from the poor to the middle classes.
Indeed, there are frequent reports of waste and error in the public sector, which the right-wing media delight in giving maximum coverage. And of course, there are frequent reports of waste and error in the private sector. Almost weekly, we have reports of how the financial institutions made 'errors' in applying fees to customers. We get reports of delayed and abandoned ICT projects in both public and private sectors. Of course, many of the problems in private organisations remain private, as we don't have a C&AG which investigates AIB and NTL etc.
Shneak:
Do you believe a company could continue in business if they offered this level of service?
Yes - what about when AIB bought a finacially unsound insurance company in the 1990's - the insurance company failed, placing AIB in danger, so the goverment GAVE AIB taxpayer's money to save bank. AIB have been making massive profits and the taxpayer money has not yet been returned...
Beat THAT!!
[broken link removed]
Calling all conspiracy theorists!
The extent to which big business and the Irish polical system became intertwined during the 80's and early 90's makes it irrelevant as a point of reference when discussing best practices.
Well I think there should be more investigating into their sick's like any job in the private sector that I have come across, when you have unions involved things are much more complicated than in the private sector,remember most semi states if not all pay 6 moths when out sick the same cant be said with private sector and I pay for their sick's and youSo what? Are you suggesting that public sector employees should accept terms & conditions that are generally lower than the norm, simply because they are public employees?
Chambers Ireland responded to my email, indicating that this claim was contained in "by the Department of Finance to the Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Service". I can't find the content of any such submission on either the Dept Finance website of the Review body website www.reviewbody.ie - Can anyone else find this submission?Thanks for the link. Obviously, this is still a 3rd-party claim. Unless/until I see the relevant Dept Finance comment, I'll take this with a large pinch of salt. I've emailed Chambers Ireland to ask them for their source.
Now I'm confused. Didn't you agree in this post that the sick pay conditions in public and private sector were generally the same? I've no problem with any reasonable investigation into those on long-term sick pay, in both public and private sector. I've never heard of a union standing in the way on any such reasonable investigations.Well I think there should be more investigating into their sick's like any job in the private sector that I have come across, when you have unions involved things are much more complicated than in the private sector,remember most semi states if not all pay 6 moths when out sick the same cant be said with private sector and I pay for their sick's and you
And private sector wastage is paid for by the taxpayer (aka the consumer) through the prices paid for goods and services.Public purse wastage is paid for by the taxpayer. That is the difference. And while errors in fees etc by financial institutions are a disgrace, the taxpayer is yet to get their money back from wastage such as electronic voting etc.
I personally have seen a few major private sector multi-million project failures where no-one got fired, and most of the guilty got promoted or at worst moved sideways. And this was in agressive, competitive multi-national environments. It ain't all that different.If a bank official or a company employee is found responsible for spending 50 million euros on a project which fails, they will be let go.
Yet the water in Galway county was poisoned for months and I haven't heard of a single person being held responsible. Heck, the people responsible will end up gaining from national wage agreement pay rises! Do you really believe someone in the private sector would be rewarded for the same level of incompetence? Do you believe a company could continue in business if they offered this level of service?
Spend a bit of time checking out the impact of the Thatcheresque reforms on the rail service or local bus services in the UK, and then come back and tell me that this is really where we want to go.There are some excellent points made in this thread.
The public sector is choking this country. Unless we have some Thatcheresque reforms fairly quickly, there will be very hard times ahead.
(BTW, I work in the private sector, and can't afford a pension.)
I believe the UK transport system is far superior to the Irish one. They actually have rail links to their airports, for example. As far as I'm aware, most of Thatcher's transport policies haven't been reversed by New Labour.Spend a bit of time checking out the impact of the Thatcheresque reforms on the rail service or local bus services in the UK, and then come back and tell me that this is really where we want to go.
I’ll Google it and come back to you. My source was RTE 1 radio.Source please?
I don’tI do.
So what? Your assertion in a later post that we pay for these mistakes as consumers shows the typical socialist lack of understanding of free market economics. With competition if one company screws up and adds cost to their product they cannot pass this cost on if it means that their good or service will be uncompetitive as a result.Indeed, there are frequent reports of waste and error in the public sector, which the right-wing media delight in giving maximum coverage. And of course, there are frequent reports of waste and error in the private sector. Almost weekly, we have reports of how the financial institutions made 'errors' in applying fees to customers. We get reports of delayed and abandoned ICT projects in both public and private sectors. Of course, many of the problems in private organisations remain private, as we don't have a C&AG which investigates AIB and NTL etc.
The unions have pushed hard for pay increases for their middle class public sector members for the last ten years as part of the agenda they set within social partnership. They have also demanded that direct taxation is not increased to fund these lavish tax increases. They did this in the full knowledge that this would result in an increase in indirect taxation (bin charges, water charges etc). These charges have a higher proportional impact the lower the income is of the person paying them. This goes against everything that unions fought for in their early years before they sold out the poor and became a lobby group.Please mention one union policy which seeks to redistribute wealth from the poor to the middle classes.
It doesn’t matter how smart or well someone works in a badly run organisation. Unions prevent management from managing. They prevent the lazy and the incompetent from being sanctioned and they prevent the hard working and smart from being rewarded. In short they set the bar as low as possible and they do everything to ensure that it stays there.Your positioning of public & private sector as extreme opposites is just fiction. Both are made of generally good people, who do generally good work most of the time. We're not that different, really...
And private sector wastage is paid for by the taxpayer (aka the consumer) through the prices paid for goods and services.
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