Great - I look forward to bringing my net salary up to the levels of the gross salary of my comparators in the private sector - woohoo!
I would imagine that that will not be the case as your total compensation will have to include the true net value of your pension.
Great - so let's get rid of Dept Agriculture, and bring on the horse burgers, in a rat milk sauce, with a fricasee of dog - consumers will just sort it out, right?
We have that department and yet burgers were still produced with horse meat. Hundreds of millions spent every year on a FAILED system. There is no way the use of horse meat is a new phenomenon, it has been going of for years undetected. If there was no department in charge of this, then people would not have the false sense of security over food quality. People do research before they buy computers, or cars or book hotels, but when it comes to government regulated industries there is a blind faith. If there was no designated department then people would do their research and check up on independent expert reviews, just like they do with so many other things they buy.
The very same thing happened, and still happens, with financial services. Banks are regulated, so why bother researching them before making a deposit or taking out a loan? But buy a computer or a car, and people check expert reviews, book test drives, get demonstration and check out customer reviews. Why would people not do that with everything else?
Let's get rid of the Dept of Tourism, and along with it the 1million visitors that come to the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre every hear.
Do you honestly think that people go to the Cliffs of Moher to look at the visitor center? They go there to look at the cliffs and they will still be there without a department of tourism.
Let's get rid of Enterprise Ireland, and the supports that it gives to the Foreign Direct Investment companies to match the supports offered in other countries.
Foreign companies invest here because of the tax rates, not because of Enterprise Ireland. FDI did not increase in the 90s because of Enterprise Ireland, or the IDA or any other government service. It increased because corporate taxes were low and overall red tape was, and to an extent still is, comparatively low.
Let's get rid of the Dept of Arts Heritage and Gaeltacht, and close down the National Museum, the National Gallery and many other supported arts and cultural venues (all providing employment and bringing in tourists of course).
They don't need to close down, they can still be operated by a private enterprise. The reason there is no competition or private alternative in these areas is because people that visit those museums do not pay, which gives them an unfair advantage over any potential private enterprise. Just because government doesn't do something doesn't mean that it wouldn't be done. Government does not make shoes or phones or car tires, but yet we have plenty of choices in those areas. Why would it be any different in museums or visitor centers?
WOuldn't Ryanair and other large providers just love to see the Competition Authority being taken away?
They probably would, but they would also HATE to see the market opened to competitors of all sizes.
WOuld these self-empowered consumers include the many consumers who fell for for the simple Slovenian mobile phone scam over the weekend? Sure they don't need any Govt agency to get refunds for them - right?
No they don't. People need to take responsibility for their own actions, and if they are defrauded then they should take legal action. I should not have to pay for someone else's mistakes.
According to the Times, the connection charge was "in excess of €2", so I will assume it is less than €5. People made a very stupid mistake by simply calling a +386xxxx missed call number and now they paid a couple of euros for a good lesson. That is not a crisis that needs to be looked after by government and paid for by those who were not scammed.
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And how exactly to you get savings by moving enforcement functions from ODCE and employment rights tribunals back into the general court system, which is already overloaded and does not have the skill, knowledge or capacity to deal with these cases?
I did mention that the entire legal system needs to be overhauled. Courts should be operating longer hours and more days; we need to get rid of the barrister system; it should not be mandatory to have a qualified solicitor/barrister represent you in certain courts; the list goes on. The small claims courts system is a perfect example of how to speed up and reduce the cost of certain cases.
Unfortunately, the theory doesn't work too well in the real world.
No, you, and many other people, simply believe that if government doesn't do certain things then they will not be done and everything will disintegrate. There is simply no evidence for such a belief; actually quite the opposite is the case.
Cuba recently went from 100% state employment to 85%. At the time there was panic and outrage about it in Cuba, because the belief was that (a) those 15% of services would no longer be offered and (b) there would suddenly be 15% unemployed. What happened? No increase in unemployment and small private enterprises started filling the gaps.
The theory has proven time and again to work perfectly well; it is your socialist blinkered world view which ignores all historic facts that is constantly being proven inept.