Sweeping reforms in Ireland

purple'n'gold

"Its a good deal better than leaving the lot of them sitting like a millstone around the country's neck. We don't need one civil servant for every four other workers in the country, nowhere near it. This part of the policy would be the most difficult to implement, I'll grant you, but if Thatcher could stare down the civil service in the UK, it can be done elsewhere".

Good ol' benchmarking Bertie stare down the civil servants? I take it you have a sense of humour!
We in the private sector should be delighted that we pay tax and FULL prsi to keep the civil servants in their featherbeded benchmarked jobs,and goldplated pensions. See I also have a sense of humour!

SimpleSam06

purplengold wrote:

Good ol' benchmarking Bertie stare down the civil servants? I take it you have a sense of humour!
We in the private sector should be delighted that we pay tax and FULL prsi to keep the civil servants in their featherbeded benchmarked jobs,and goldplated pensions. See I also have a sense of humour!

I have even less faith in Honest Ahern, the Builders' Buddy, than yourself. One of the main points of the thread was how one would go about forming a new political party here in Ireland, and how you would go about mustering popular support for such an effort. This party would then go about enacting the neccessary reforms. The time isn't ripe for it just yet, but in the coming economic troubles there might be an opportunity for those with the wits to spot the chance and the will to see it through.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Okay, I'm using the term "civil service" maybe a bit too generally here. Lets say, anyone that gets paid from the money the Revenue Commissioners collect....As to who gets fired, lets start with the €250,000 a year consultants, and work our way down the food chain, shall we?

So that would include people on the dole, nurses, civil servants, teachers, Gardai, firemen, TDs, senators, health inspectors, people on disability allowance, social welfare pensioners and private sector consultants paid by the government?

Will you fire people based on how much they get paid or based on their effectiveness? How do you propose to measure that?

Some kind of 'benchmarking'?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

So that would include people on the dole, nurses, civil servants, teachers, Gardai, firemen, TDs, senators, health inspectors, people on disability allowance, social welfare pensioners and private sector consultants paid by the government?

I'm not referring to people on the dole, on disability allowance, or social welfare pensioners, as should be abundantly clear from reading the thread. I'm talking about public sector employees, which does include all of those other categories you mentioned.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Will you fire people based on how much they get paid or based on their effectiveness? How do you propose to measure that?

Well for a start, public sector wages have been increasing a great deal faster than their private sector counterparts. This is based on the "benchmarking" process, which is largely rooted in the mistaken observation by public sector employees that everyone was getting rich in the dot com boom, while they were slaving away on a pittance with no real prospects of improvement. I've actually encountered nurses and teachers who have said exactly that to me.

Its no good pointing out to them that a market which willingly paid well for services, and holding the country to ransom for a very unreasonable pay raise are two very different things.

Furthermore, a recent report suggested that private sector employees would need to save twenty eight percent of their pay for forty years in order to be able to afford a pension similar to that received in the public sector.

So, the upshot would need to be a salary review, hours worked review, and pension reform, as well as a "requirements" review, to see who we really need in the grand apparatus of government, and who is just dead wood or middle management. Performance reviews (not the load of bollocks currently in place, before anyone mentions it) would need to be in place as well, and the day of the public employee who cannot be fired needs to come to an end.

A great deal of the day to day working of the government could be easily automated as well, doing away with many paper pushers. I've no doubt everyone has a story to tell, yes they are vital to the well being of the state, and so on; I don't care. By leveraging technology and modern methods of organisation in every section of goverment, further reductions in required employees can be made.

There are a lot of other issues I'd like to see addressed as well, such as that there are very few places for people to socialise except bars and nightclubs in Ireland. You can lay the blame for a lot of the stress on the police force and emergency services at that door as well, never mind the knock on effects to the economy.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So, the upshot would need to be a salary review, hours worked review, and pension reform, as well as a "requirements" review, to see who we really need in the grand apparatus of government, and who is just dead wood or middle management. Performance reviews (not the load of bollocks currently in place, before anyone mentions it) would need to be in place as well, and the day of the public employee who cannot be fired needs to come to an end.

I thought I read somewhere that public servants could be fired?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

By leveraging technology and modern methods of organisation in every section of goverment, further reductions in required employees can be made.

OK, You've fired all the senior managers and you're against hiring expensive consultants. Who will do the review and how much will you pay them? Also, who will do the leveraging/automation/IT thingy? How much will that cost and who will you hire to do that: PWC?

What if it transpires that offices outside of Dublin will have to close and the current government is faced with a back-bench revolt?

SimpleSam06

And just a quick link to information about that report, some of which I quote here:

A private sector worker can provide for the equivalent of a public service pension for a maximum of two-thirds of final salary for retirement. However, 28% of salary would have to be put aside every year for 40 years to do so. Not many people can afford to save this amount.

This figure is based on an assumption that a person's salary increases by 5% per annum; annual investment growth is 7% and annuity rates (which buy a pension on retirement) are 4%.

The solution that is available to the small few who get top positions in the private is to have their company agree to set aside large amounts in a pension fund as funding of 28% for four decades is only something a public servant could dream of, without worrying about who was doing the paying.

Even where the private sector pensioner ends on the same salary as a public sector counterpart, the latter will continue to be a winner.

Public Sector and Private Sector Earnings

Last Thursday, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) announced that average industrial hourly pay increased by 2.1% in 2005 compared with a rise in the Consumer price index of 2.5%. Being an average means that some workers got less than a 2% increase.

The average hourly wage in the Manufacture of food products sector was €13.09 in December and was highest at €28.74 in the Electricity, gas, steam and hot water supply sector that is dominated by two State companies.

Average weekly earnings of All Employees (Industrial, Clerical and Managerial) rose by 3.4% in the year to December 2005. This rise consists of increases of 3.1% for Industrial Employees and 3.7% for Clerical and Managerial employees combined.

On February 1st, the CSO reported that average weekly earnings in the Public Sector (excluding Health) rose by 5.7% in the year to September 2005. The index of average earnings, which excludes some effects of changes in employment composition, rose by 5.7% for the same period.

The average weekly earnings for the total public sector (ex Health) was €848.87 - €44,000 annually. The average in the Semi-State sector was €901.53.

The average weekly earnings for all employees in the Industrial Sector including Managerial staff in December, was €693.95 - €36,000 annually.

In December 2000, a Public Service Benchmarking Body, established under the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (PPF), was asked to undertake a fundamental examination of the pay of public service employees vis-a-vis the private sector. Former Davy Stockbrokers' economist Jim O'Leary was a member of the body for a period but he resigned before it reported.

In 2004, O'Leary who had joined the Department of Economics at Maynooth University, published with two of his colleagues, the results of six months' rigorous and painstaking research into public-private sector pay differentials in Ireland - Public-Private Wage Differentials in Ireland, G.Boyle, R.McElligott and J.O'Leary, ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2004.

O'Leary and his colleagues wanted to discover whether similar people in similar employment circumstances were better or worse off working in the public than in the private sector. In order to do this, they had to control for attributes like age, experience, gender and education, and also for job characteristics like occupation, type of contract and size of establishment.

As the CSO data does not permit this kind of analysis, the dataset that they had to use is one based on a large-scale survey conducted by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and used for much of its research into poverty and inequality.

The core finding was that on average, public servants earned 13 per cent more than their private sector counterparts on a like-for-like basis in 2001. The researchers also discovered that the size of this margin (the public sector premium) in 2001 was not significantly different from what it had been in 1994, suggesting that pay increases in the public sector had kept pace with the private sector throughout the Celtic Tiger period.

Another discovery was that the margin by which public service workers outearned their private sector counterparts tended to be significantly larger at the bottom of the income distribution than at the top.

A particularly striking finding was that the estimate of the public sector premium for Ireland was more than twice as large as the available estimates for other countries.

The Public Sector Benchmarking Body recommended pay increases which averaged 9 per cent across the grades examined and cost €1.2 billion a year. Government Departments introduced aspirational targets for staff that would make a laughing stock of a manager in the private sector who emulated the farcical exercise.

O'Leary says that the Public Sector Benchmarking Body never published its research results and at no stage in its 278-page report did it explicitly state or opine that public sector pay had fallen behind that in the private sector.

Last November, Davy Stockbrokers said that Irish public sector pay is on average around 120 percent of private sector earnings, having risen from 113 percent in the past five years.

In a weekly market comment, Davy said that figures from the CSO (Central Statistics Office) indicated that average earnings in the public sector are now more than €43,000 a year. This compares with €33,500 in the private sector (industrial, construction, distribution and other sectors).

"Moreover, these crude comparisons take no account of the superior pension entitlements available to the public sector," Chief Economist Robbie Kelleher said.

The benchmarking awards have widened the gap significantly even though these were supposed to help the public sector catch up.

There are no performance targets and there are jobs for life.

On Thursday last, the trade union representing lower-paid civil servants warned the Government it will launch a number of equal pay claims which could cost the State up to €300m in back-pay.

The CPSU aims to close the gender pay gap in the civil service.

The union says the first case will centre on clerical workers earning €10,000 less than prison officers for doing the same work.

General Secretary of the CPSU Blair Horan sad that he is confident they will succeed, especially on the back of the recent Garda equal pay case, saying: “We’re now going to extend that claim, throughout the civil service and other government departments and we believe we’ve a good chance of success.”

He may well be right, given that it's easy for politicians to disburse money that's not theirs.

The politicians got their cut of the benchmarking bonanza and it was a confirmation of a reality in Ireland that those who can grab hold of the public megaphone, can generally get their way, whatever the facts and reality.

© Copyright 2007 by Finfacts.com

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I thought I read somewhere that public servants could be fired?

You read wrong, except under exceptional circumstances.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

OK, You've fired all the senior managers and you're against hiring expensive consultants. Who will do the review and how much will you pay them? Also, who will do the leveraging/automation/IT thingy? How much will that cost and who will you hire to do that: PWC?

What would be needed there would be an auditing group, third party and external. Many such exist to help businesses streamline their operations. The government cannot and should not be run like a business, but you specify that in the criteria for the auditing group.

Note that I never said I would fire all the senior managers, and yes I am against hiring expensive consultants. There is a large pool of national and international groups who would be delighted to take on a task like the automation and modernisation of the apparatus of a government, under strict supervision and deadlines, with inbuilt redundancy measures, to prevent the projects becoming a feeding trough.

As to how much it would cost, the better question to ask would be, how much will it save.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

What if it transpires that offices outside of Dublin will have to close and the current government is faced with a back-bench revolt?

The idea was never to reduce the effectiveness of government, but rather to make it more efficient and less of a weight on the nation as a whole. In any case, I'm not sure where you are getting this "widespread closure of offices and reduction of services" idea. Offices which close would need to be replaced by a similar or better service.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You read wrong, except under exceptional circumstances.

Same as in private sector then?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

The government cannot and should not be run like a business, but you specify that in the criteria for the auditing group.

Isn't that a license to keep people on for purely political reasons (e.g. unnecessary staff in a town located in a marginal constituency?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

and yes I am against hiring expensive consultants. ....There is a large pool of national and international groups who would be delighted to take on a task like the automation and modernisation of the apparatus of a government,

Name some. Give examples of past successes. Also some IT companies that would do the leveraging automation thingy you're so keen on. There's a few that have tried this in the UK I think?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

As to how much it would cost, the better question to ask would be, how much will it save.

Indeed, will we know this before or after the money has been spent?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

widespread closure of offices and reduction of services" idea. Offices which close would need to be replaced by a similar or better service.

Who said 'widespread"? The question is are you naive or do you accept that the government might not accept the outcome?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Same as in private sector then?

Hahah, you must be kidding. Seriously.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Isn't that a license to keep people on for purely political reasons (e.g. unnecessary staff in a town located in a marginal constituency?

Theres where your "third party" auditing group comes in. They aren't involved in the country, and when their job is done, they won't be back.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Name some. Give examples of past successes. Also some IT companies that would do the leveraging automation thingy you're so keen on. There's a few that have tried this in the UK I think?

So what your saying is that no large scale IT projects have ever been completed, and we should cast our hands to the sky and go back to the abacus and quill? Just because previous government efforts here and in the Uk have been disgraceful disasters, doesn't mean that will hold true for all such projects, forever. The point of this thread is about change in the status quo.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Indeed, will we know this before or after the money has been spent?

That would be the point of the auditing group, wouldn't it?

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Who said 'widespread"? The question is are you naive or do you accept that the government might not accept the outcome?

You seem to have real difficulty with the concept of the purpose of a government. Governments exist for the facility of the people, not the other way around. If the vast majority of people accept the need for these reforms, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Raskolnikov

The pensions of public sector workers definitely need to be reformed. It's a scandal in this day and age that they receive a full pension with zero contributions. The people who fund these pension, the private sector workers, very often don't get a single cent from their employers.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Hahah, you must be kidding. Seriously.

Seems like you're a bit short on details & are generalising quite a bit.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Theres where your "third party" auditing group comes in. They aren't involved in the country, and when their job is done, they won't be back.

So, give an example of such a group and tell\us about their past successes.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So what your saying is that no large scale IT projects have ever been completed, and we should cast our hands to the sky and go back to the abacus and quill? Just because previous government efforts here and in the Uk have been disgraceful disasters,

I'm glad you now recognise the risks although you seem ignorant of the role of the private-sector contractors in those failures. Some 80% of IT projects in the public and private sector fail

SimpleSam06 wrote:

That would be the point of the auditing group, wouldn't it?

What a wonderful idea. Who are these people exactly?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You seem to have real difficulty with the concept of the purpose of a government. Governments exist for the facility of the people, not the other way around. If the vast majority of people accept the need for these reforms, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Bless you, you must be new to politics. What happens when the consultants announce that the government offices, in, say, Coolock, Castlebarr Cahirciveen and Carrick on Shannon must close? What happens when the consultants tell the TDs to fire their political advisors?

I think you have great ideas but I seriously doubt if you really know how to make them work.

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Seems like you're a bit short on details & are generalising quite a bit.

In fairness, I could say the same thing about your responses on that issue. Having "read somewhere" that public sector employees could be fired easily isn't what I would call a credible rebuttal.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

So, give an example of such a group and tell\us about their past successes.

If I ever get as far as doing any of this, I'll be delighted to supply you and the rest of the country with that information. Theres no reason why a group could not be formed from scratch, in fact, if it came to it.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I'm glad you now recognise the risks although you seem ignorant of the role of the private-sector contractors in those failures. Some 80% of IT projects in the public and private sector fail

80%? Amazing, I'm surprised we ever got past the mastery of fire. Back up that, if you would be so good, a link would be nice. I'm very familiar with the role of private sector groups in these failures, and equally aware of the role that government mismanagement and pork politics played in these failures.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Bless you, you must be new to politics. What happens when the consultants announce that the government offices, in, say, Coolock, Castlebarr Cahirciveen and Carrick on Shannon must close? What happens when the consultants tell the TDs to fire their political advisors?

Probably the same thing that will happen when the junior ministers are told they can no longer receive salaries in excess of that of the German Chancellor. You are assuming that any of these reforms I am talking about here would take place in the current government. They would not. I am speaking about setting up a new party specifically to enact and oversee these reforms.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I think you have great ideas but I seriously doubt if you really know how to make them work.

No harm in grilling the ideas, in fact I'd be a lot more worried if no one said a word against them! While I may not have the nuts-and-bolts details of the reforms as yet, no one ever does at the start of projects. You start with an idea, then you flesh out the concept and make it workable.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

isn't what I would call a credible rebuttal.

The point is that you don't know what you're talking about. You confused public servants with civil servants and then you asserted that civil servants could not be fired when this is, in fact, untrue.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

If I ever get as far as doing any of this, I'll be delighted to supply you and the rest of the country with that information. Theres no reason why a group could not be formed from scratch, in fact, if it came to it.

Nobody is going to support you as you stand on such shaky ground. Back up your idea with examples of where your idea has already succeeded. BTW, why not call your group something like 'Progressive Democrats'?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

80%? Amazing,

Why are you amazed? It's the very first thing they tell trainees project managers. Try Here

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I'm surprised we ever got past the mastery of fire.

We did, but millions of people got killed in the process.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I'm very familiar with the role of private sector groups in these failures, and equally aware of the role that government mismanagement and pork politics played in these failures.

Then your naive optimism is very puzzling.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

You start with an idea, then you flesh out the concept and make it workable.

Your idea is not original and we have not seen any meat, let alone living flesh, just a lot of wild ideas.

What we'll get will be just as useless as a 'shared bike/car cycle lane'. That sums up most public service projects

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

The point is that you don't know what you're talking about. You confused public servants with civil servants and then you asserted that civil servants could not be fired when this is, in fact, untrue.

Actually, first I used civil servant and public servant interchangeably, then I used "anyone paid by the revenue commissioners", and finally we have settled on "public sector employee". Now this doesn't seem to matter to anyone else except yourself, and it's been very clear from the get-go what and who I was talking about. Not to worry though, you can always "just read it somewhere in a book", right?

You wouldn't be the recipient of government funds yourself, by any chance?

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Nobody is going to support you as you stand on such shaky ground. Back up your idea with examples of where your idea has already succeeded. BTW, why not call your group something like 'Progressive Democrats'?

I have no need to back up something as basic as "auditing", especially not for the likes of yourself, who appears to be interested in circular arguments rather than actual progression.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Why are you amazed? It's the very first thing they tell trainees project managers. Try Here

And he links to a site trying to sell consulting services. What exactly do you think they are going to say, they are trying to sell services to you! Those figures basically say that IT projects which run into any difficulty at all are "failures". By those standards, 90% of civil engineering projects fail as well. Maybe we should stop building roads, and just make bicyles mandatory. Here comes the ambucycle...

The computer you are typing on is the result of a successful large scale IT project.

What most companies think of when they hear "government contract" is, woohoo, pork. Some sample steps just off the top of my head to combat this: structuring projects in such a way that a) multiple contractors are working on the same project (redundancy), b) only the successful ones will get paid enough to cover their expenses, c) introducing standard issue payment penalties for time or functionality overruns, and d) breaking monolithic projects into smaller modules with clear interoperability guidelines. And that is just off the top of my head.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

We did, but millions of people got killed in the process... Then your naive optimism is very puzzling... I have nothing really useful to add... Your idea is not original and we have not seen any meat, let alone living flesh, just a lot of wild ideas.

Okay you pedal your way back to the nineteenth century so, leave us to look after the future. Don't forget to leave your PC at the door! :rolleyes:

cyclopath2001 wrote:

What we'll get will be just as useless as a 'shared bike/car cycle lane'. That sums up most public service projects

This is like talking to a wall. Its not, run an audit and projects with the current government - it's "REPLACE THE GOVERNMENT" then make your changes to the structure. It bears repeating because you seem to have missed the point several times; it was actually the first section of the first post in this thread as well, now that I come to think of it.

Seriously, unless you have something new or unique to add to the conversation, I'm going to assume your muse has made off with your handlebar moustache, and you are in hot pursuit, so stop wasting my time with pointless circular arguments.

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

The point is that you don't know what you're talking about. You confused public servants with civil servants and then you asserted that civil servants could not be fired when this is, in fact, untrue.

And just to put this part of the discussion permanently to bed, heres the encyclopedia definition of a civil servant:

A civil servant or public servant is a civilian career public sector employee working for a government department or agency. The term explicitly excludes the armed services, although civilian officials will work at "Defence Ministry" headquarters.

You will note that I explicitly excluded the armed services in my OP.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

And he links to a site trying to sell consulting services.

They're fairly typical of the industry. The kind of people you may need to hire.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

The computer you are typing on is the result of a successful large scale IT project.

It's a Windows computer, mediocre, bloated, unreliable and over-priced. It's successful because it achieved a near-monopoly and customers have no real choice. Are you proposing this as model for Public Services?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Some sample steps just off the top of my head to combat this:

Indeed it is just 'off the top of your head'. It's not new. Who exactly manages the project? Public servants? Project management consultants? Shadowy international trouble-shooters?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Seriously, unless you have something new or unique to add to the conversation, ......

There's nothing new or unique in your proposals. It sounds very much like a discarded PD manifesto. Any circularity is in trying to lead you back and in holes in your unoriginal arguments.

Can you give an example of where a proposal such as yours has worked in the past, and tell us who the miraculous, inexpensive, non-consultant, auditors were?

Bottom line is this: How can you convince people that you could master the details needed to realise your ambitions for this country?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

They're fairly typical of the industry. The kind of people you may need to hire.

People quoting inaccurate or misleading statistics in order to scare up some business are not people I will ever hire.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

It's a Windows computer, mediocre, bloated, unreliable and over-priced. It's successful because it achieved a near-monopoly and customers have no real choice. Are you proposing this as model for Public Services?

Windows only makes the operating system. There is a great deal more in a computer than the OS. And even that does, at the end of the day, work. If this is the level of knowledge you posess about the industry, I see no point in discussing it with you.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Indeed it is just 'off the top of your head'.

Were these measures taken in all of these failed government IT projects you are so proud of?

cyclopath2001 wrote:

I think you have great ideas

cyclopath2001 wrote:

There's nothing new or unique in your proposals.

Hmmm.

And just on a point of interest, even if they are not new or unique (although I did come up with them myself), that does not make them wrong or unworkable.

Seriously though, your main objection seems to be that large technological projects always fail. With an attitude like that, no one would ever take advantage of new technology or advances. Proceeding with caution and analysis goes without saying, but luddites need not apply.

cyclopath2001 wrote:

Bottom line is this: How can you convince people that you could master the details needed to realise your ambitions for this country?

To properly analyse and produce the information you are looking for would take months. I just opened a thread airing some ideas I had on boards. Discarding the whole thing because one poster on boards with shaky statistics and a poor grasp of project management thinks it wouldn't work would be a bit silly now, wouldn't it? As I said, if I ever make a serious effort at something like this, I'll be more than happy to supply you, personally, with more information than you can ever reasonably digest. Until such time, however, you'll have to make do with the ideas laid out here.

So let me ask you a question: what would you like to see being done with the country? I have little patience with hand-wringers and naysayers. Give me solid alternatives.

is_that_so

SimpleSam06 wrote:

I already posted this over in AH, but maybe thats not the right place to put it. How would you go about getting into power and what reforms would you like to see?

I think you'd first need a wide range of policies which would appeal to your target population, with enough appeal that it won't piss off business interests and those with a lot to lose from radical reforms.

Next you'd need to get your faces into the media, which is an expensive process. You'd either need independent financing or some sponsors with deep pockets, which again goes back to policies. And again, you need to have a support base before doing that, which is hard to get without media coverage, in a catch-22 situation.

Once you have policies, a party structure, a support base, and regular media coverage, you need to actually get into power. Actually on the whole, its not too hard a process. Find a sponsor or two, political and legal experts, a marketing team, and away you go. If it was up to me, I'd enact the following reforms:

• More stringent controls on the banking and financial sector to prevent them throwing money at people who really can't afford to pay it back.
  
• Anti property investment legislation, as was recommended in the Bacon report (actually implemented but cancelled due to a shortage of housing stock at the time).
  
• Much tighter control of the civil service, in particular the health service, with wide layoffs and pay freezes until they are on a par with the private sector, pension reform also.
  
• Sweeping reforms of the outdated armed forces in Ireland, with a focus on smaller, better trained and equipped groups, and a considerably enhanced naval and air profile. The days of the mass army are long gone, and if its not effective, remove it. Yes I know Aegis cruisers cost a fortune, but you only need to buy them once every 50 years.
  
• Enhanced support for entrepreneurs and small business people, with low interest loans and favourable grants for that purpose. And a branch of the government whose sole purpose it is to help them market and sell their product internationally and nationally.
  
• Much higher government investment in local industry and technology - open an Irish built car manufacturing plant for example, or make boats our speciality, this is an island after all. There are also exciting things being done in the field of renewable resources and biotech, automation, the list is endless. This is also where you can put your recently fired/retired civil servants.
  
• Reforms of the police and prison systems, making them better equipped but fewer in numbers, and a real alternative to the failed prison system we have currently in place, focused on proper rehabilitation.
  
• A review and reform of border controls and immigration.
  
• A foreign policy focused on trade and the exchange of raw materials and ideas with other nations, in particular poorer countries (a la what China is doing right now), leveraging our favourable position within the EU, which offers free access to a market of a half a billion people. As it is most of our foreign policy is flogging faith-n-begorrah.
  
• A minimal taxation policy.
  
• Loosened local intellectual property laws, which have historically lead to massive advancements in technology whenever it occurred (see again China and in fact the US around the turn of the last century).
  
• Reforms of the agricultural sector, focusing on better returns for the effort put in, and specialised food crops.
  
• Complete educational reforms, and a much larger investment into the educational system. I don't mean by this more pay for teachers, I mean more teachers, more schools, and the latest cutting edge equipment in schools and universities.
  
• Strong anti corruption legislation, mandatory end to end financial transparency for all public servants above a certain level, and using the new ubiquity of the internet to allow the general population to have more of a say in local government.
• Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure.
• Much development on the process of teaching the Irish language, and the focus on Irish culture in general. Particular emphasis would be placed on the works of people like Jim Fitzpatrick.
• Support for the concept of a united Ireland, but passive support only. If the people of the north vote to rejoin the south, they are more than welcome.

Now thats an Ireland I'd like to live in.

You may be doomed to failure on your quest as your policies have made scapegoats of a very large group of people which would include teachers, civil servants , health workers and their families. Why might they vote for unemployment?

I will say that although some of the ideas are interesting the timescale is likely to be 10-20 years and presumes that there is the political will to even bother.

Given our politics this will not happen. Sweeping reforms have a tendency to get swept under the carpet. I would also say that reforms that do not explain clearly why it is necessary to Joe Public can end up as an intellectual exercise.

That said some of it is eminently fixable.

I think though it is too narrowly focussed.

Where are the plans to deal with poverty and inequality?

Where is the pre-school education system?

Where are the proposals on joined up planning?

Much of what you propose is dependent on income and runs the risk of not being done properly if there is not enough income. This I see as the problem with very low taxation. Present levels IMO are close to where we could be, providing we have proper enforcement.

I think the starting point really should be who we are and what we want? Personally I am not in favour of yet another version of Ireland Inc. My own feeling is that we should have to pay for services but that those services must be as good as they can be.

Reforms for me would include

• Education , including pre-school
• Irish - Teaching it in a useful way
• Infrastructure to include education
• Public Transport
• Integration policies and legislation
• Equitable taxation and stringent enforcement
• Energy Policies
• Poverty Eradication
• Update "The Comely Maidens at the Crossroads" Speech - there must be a vision
• Planning, planning, planning to include massive fines and prison time for those attempting to subvert the process.
• Prison and Justice System, Gardai - Overhaul all of it
• Local Government Reform to include more power at local levels. Elected mayors is a good starting point.
• Good ethics legislation for all of those in office
• Health System - A hope that there must be a better way to run this
• Government/Public Service reform over a 10 year period, to include proper benchmarking but without the free cash.

SimpleSam06

is_that_so wrote:

You may be doomed to failure on your quest as your policies have made scapegoats of a very large group of people which would include teachers, civil servants , health workers and their families. Why might they vote for unemployment?

Yes, that part of it would be by far the most difficult to enact. The situation we have at the moment is untenable, however, so I don't see many alternatives. Unless we want to go back to the 80s again, which is possible. These policies would also upset those who own property and have a vested interest in maintaining high property prices.

Seeing something like this through would depend upon motivating the younger voters to join the voting, a difficult task but not impossible, with the right media message.

And they aren't scapegoats if they are really at fault.

is_that_so wrote:

I will say that although some of the ideas are interesting the timescale is likely to be 10-20 years and presumes that there is the political will to even bother.

I would hope for more like 5-10 years. As for the political will, nobody feels expecially like rocking the boat when the country is doing well, at least on paper. Many are predicting a serious economic downturn in the near future however, so there might be an opportunity then.

is_that_so wrote:

Given our politics this will not happen. Sweeping reforms have a tendency to get swept under the carpet. I would also say that reforms that do not explain clearly why it is necessary to Joe Public can end up as an intellectual exercise.

The idea would be to change the politics. I don't see any of these policies being too complex to fit into neat soundbites either.

is_that_so wrote:

Where are the plans to deal with poverty and inequality?

Dealing with poverty is linked to both domestic industrial investment and education, both of which are covered by the policies outlined. Obviously there are sociological elements that need to be dealt with as well, where an element of justice reform comes into play. Also I mentioned a lack of alternatives to getting banjoed in bars and clubs; that is relatively easy to fix. Also as far as I can tell, inequality is well on its way to being fixed as it is, although a review of the process might not hurt.

is_that_so wrote:

Where is the pre-school education system?

Funny you should mention that, actually, I was just pondering how best to deal with education. As it is you have a one-size-fits-all situation, which is barely adequate, with some segregation being done in secondary school, dividing students into higher and lower grades. We can surely do better than this.

One idea I was knocking around was a countrywide free or low cost wi-fi network (not that hard to do, in fact). The telcos would raise holy hell about interfering with their business, but in this day and age it's almost as neccessary as plumbing, in my opinion, so eminent domain them into the background (with the hint that they are lucky we don't look too closely at the rest of their operations).

You could put entire school and university curriculums online, with graded tests which visitors would need to pass before they got to the next level of the curriculum. Classes could be reduced in duration, covering the basic elements of education, while more advanced students could steam ahead at their own pace, with the assistance of a mentor or tutor (either online or in the classroom), gaining extra credits for their own work.

I am aware that there are lot of details that would need to be filled in there, (not everyone has a computer, for example) but it is the seed of something interesting.

is_that_so wrote:

Much of what you propose is dependent on income and runs the risk of not being done properly if there is not enough income. This I see as the problem with very low taxation. Present levels IMO are close to where we could be, providing we have proper enforcement.

We wouldn't really know how much taxation is the bare minimum until the entire apparatus is properly audited, I'd say.

is_that_so wrote:

My own feeling is that we should have to pay for services but that those services must be as good as they can be.

I'm in complete agreement with you here.

is_that_so wrote:

Integration policies and legislation

Yes, this is another vital area where the government has been ineffective.

is_that_so wrote:

Update "The Comely Maidens at the Crossroads" Speech - there must be a vision

There seems to be one emerging from this thread!

is_that_so wrote:

Government/Public Service reform over a 10 year period, to include proper benchmarking but without the free cash.

The only proper benchmarking at this stage would be reverse benchmarking.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

And even that does, at the end of the day, work.

The same could be said of the public services you criticise. next time choose a better example.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Were these measures taken in all of these failed government IT projects you are so proud of?

First, please quote where I indicated any 'pride' in any failed projects? Next, provide the examples you've been asked for repeatedly and failed to provide.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

your main objection seems to be that large technological projects always fail.

Where did I say that that? You're misquoting again.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

To properly analyse and produce the information you are looking for would take months. I just opened a thread airing some ideas I had on boards. Discarding the whole thing because one poster on boards with shaky statistics and a poor grasp of project management thinks it wouldn't work would be a bit silly now, wouldn't it?

Who said anything about discarding the whole thing? You're misquoting yet again. I support your ideas on efficiency. The question is whether or not anyone would trust in your ability to see them through. Where are your statistics and where are your examples of successful project management?

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Until such time, however, you'll have to make do with the ideas laid out here.

They're lovely ideas, but they're not yours and unless you can tell people how you'd accomplish them, nobody is going to elect you to see them through. They'll probably vote PD instead.

SimpleSam06 wrote:

So let me ask you a question: what would you like to see being done with the country?

On project management and efficiency, what you've proposed. But, see above.

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

They're lovely ideas, but they're not yours

Aaand with a whoosh, he went from signal to noise.

cyclopath2001

SimpleSam06 wrote:

Aaand with a whoosh, he went from signal to noise.

So, no examples or case studies then?

SimpleSam06

cyclopath2001 wrote:

So, no examples or case studies then?

Did you just doze off and let your saliva randomly short circuit the keyboard in to produce your responses here? Lets recap your contributions to this discussion, shall we?

• You don't know what a government employee is - Er right. This actually set the tone for the whole farcical level of your contributions. Basically flak with nary a constructive element in sight.
• What's an audit - Send me your PPS number and you won't be long finding out.
• Large tech projects fail, so why bother - You have a poor grasp of anything to do with technology (equipped with a "windows computer", designed and manufactured wholly in windozia, apparently), and really, with an attitude like that, just crawl off into your corner there and stop bothering the real people.
• Requesting statistics and evidence for the two above: What? Just, what?
• How would you convince people you could handle it - I'm not trying to convince you. In fact, I'd bet on you being a public sector employee. Actually, with your lack of knowledge of audits and certainty that large projects would fail, I'd bet even more on it.
• General verbal impotence - Including producing false and misleading statistics yourself. I hope they invent a verbal viagra for you, my cycling friend, I really do.

You remind me of the very first time that the word "troll" was used on the internet.

"You are so far beyond being able to understand anything anyone here says that this is just converging on uselessness. The really sad part is that you really believe that you're winning..." there's more but you can read it in a book for yourself there.

Why don't you do us a favour, son, and link to one of those discarded PD manifestos that mirror the ideas presented here. Because if I'm not mistaken, that means you are accusing me of plagiarism, and I take that quite seriously.

cyclopath2001

Can you tell me if you are aware of any kind of audit of the public service at present?

oscarBravo

SimpleSam06, less of the personal attacks, please, and no more accusations of trolling.

Oh, and don't mistake this for a polite request.