Cabinet's con on pay prevents public sector pay restraint

patslatt

The rapid deterioration in Irish government finances over the past two years prompted the EU Commission a few months ago to urge budgetary restraint. That,coupled with rapidly rising unemployment on the Live Register,underlines the urgent need for public sector pay restraint in coming social partnership negotiations.

Such pay restraint is unlikely given the unprecedented,massive Cabinet pay increases which place Bertie in the absurd position as the best paid democratically leader of all,including Bush.

While the Cabinet may argue that its pay levels were recommended by independent bodies,in a subtle piece of conmanship those bodies included many very rich business people who naturally think everybody at the very top in business should be paid a fortune. The very rich do not properly understand that government is not business and that politicians' pay levels should not be too many multiples of typical wage earners' pay because otherwise political leaders will become completely out of touch with the economic realities of ordinary citizens. The Cabinet surely understood this and Bertie certainly did so given his background as a trade union negotiator,but they went ahead anyhow with this exercise in greed,like pigs at the trough. Maybe Bertie was motivated by the risk that the Mahon Tribunal may not award him recovery of his huge legal costs.

Given the Cabinet's poor leadership on pay restraint,the Cabinet can now only rescue the situation by refusing all pay increases for the duration of the present government. Leadership by example would enable the government to negotiate with a straight face with the public sector unions on the issue of pay restraint.

Absent pay restraint,increases in public sector pay, which already is up to 40% higher than private sector pay with very generous,gold plated public sector pension entitlements included,could start to look like looting. This could severely undermine the public trust in government and eventually bring a hard right wing political swing towards minimalist government.

By contrast,in the UK,private sector pay of £27,225 in 2008/9 is 20% higher than the public sector pay of £22,775,figures quoted from a survey in The Times of London March 10 article,"Wage increases falling further behind the cost of living". Does anyone think that the Irish public sector is better than the UK's? Is the the biggest Irish government entity, the dysfunctional HSE,providing better health care than the free NHS? Are our transport infrastructures better? Hardly.

pfkf1

Completely agree, unless the cabinet reject their pay increases, they can hardly expect for Unions to show restraint, the government must show something that they haven't shown in a very long time, leadership.

We have already seen the pinch of our public finances, 8 Billion deficit, record rise on the live register, returning to 1998 levels on the live register. 140 teachers to get the sack, delays in all transport 21 projects.

The government can't seriously ask for restraint in pay talks due to the economic situation (which they have caused) while accepting huge pay increases themselves, so that would make me think that they will do just that, as they have lost all touch with reality.

gurramok

Well, the HSE is looking for €300m cutbacks!

Will be interesting to see if they accept them fully this time in November 12mths on, i think the month was Nov. last year.

You must remember also, the UK has a huge Defence budget which accounts for a fair whack of the public sector wage bill unlike us with a minnow defence dept so Ireland's excuse for a huge public sector bill is just too many people being overpaid in that sector.