Why has a moratorium on hiring in the public sector only just started

tagoona

Listening to Faughna(?) Murphy there whining about a hiring freeze on new gardai and promoted 40 Seargents and 12 inspectors last month.

I'm not in business, but even running a household budget, if you find that you are now spending more than is coming in, the first thing you do is stop spending money on new items.

Everyone and his dog has known the economy is in **** since last september, but it's only now they're stopping hiring. What on earth are the government playing at

jimmmy

Too true. The govt have concentrated on raising taxes but not looked enough at expenditure. Inflation is now forecast to be minus 4% this year ( deflation ). They missed the golden opportunity to slash public sector expenditure by 4%....that would save approx. € 500,000,000.00
Instead the public sector gets another 4% raise in real terms.

Geri Boyle

I understand your frustration tagoona but cutting frontline services is not the answer. Health and Safety should always come first anyway. Everybody wants the guards to take the hit until theyre assaulted or their house is broken into and there arent enough on duty to show up. Due to a change in retirement age for Guards a few years back, and the new pension levy there are a huge number due to retire this year. Thats why there are promotions and a need for recruitment. Crime also increases in a recession!

jimmmy

Why not keep them working for a few more years ? There are guards retired, sunning themselves in foreign climes as we speak, in their fifties, on more retirement money than their colleageus actually earn for working in Birmingham and Berlin.

Geri Boyle

Why are people out for the blood of the hard working members of our society who are actually needed and who make a difference? They already are working more more years than they used to and have built up their pensions from working every Godforsaken hour they could over the years due to short staffing numbers and over stretched resources. Now there is no overtime AND short staffing. Its the public who will suffer. Also its not frontline service who suck the public service dry its admin.

grahamo

Ill informed, bitter, people talking sh**e as usual. In times of recession and high unemployment crime rates actually RISE. In theory there should be more gardai hired when the economy is in a downturn.
How people can constantly slag the cops all the time off I don't know!!:(
When the amount of muggings, burglaries etc. go through the roof people will be calling for more cops on the street.

stevoman

law and order in this country has never been worse off. hardly looking to decrease the output of our police services is going to help.

whats next after that then? get rid of the childrens hospital because kids dont pay taxes??? :mad:

tagoona

I never mentioned cutting numbers and/or services.

But when times are tough, you have to make do with what you have.
And while I did mention the gardai as an example, it's just a sample of what's going on in all sections of the public service.

Geri Boyle

A recruitment freeze is effectively cutting numbers for the reasons Ive already mentioned. In times of emergency you have to prioritise. Using your analogy of managing a household budget, you dont skimp on health and safety of your family because youre short a few quid. You sacrifice something that isnt so important. Frontline emergency services were stretched to the limit even in times of the celtic tiger. This freeze could prove to be catastrophic. Pick on something that doesnt matter so much.

jimmmy

stevoman wrote: »

law and order in this country has never been worse off. hardly looking to decrease the output of our police services is going to help.

Exactly. Then why have the govt early retirement scheme? As I said, why not keep them working for a few more years ? There are guards retired, sunning themselves in foreign climes as we speak, in their fifties, on more retirement money than their colleageus actually earn for working in Birmingham and Berlin.

ixoy

Cutting numbers in areas like the many quangos or administration makes more sense, although we'd have to worry about the large lump redundancy sums they are "entitled" to (give 'em 2 weeks per year!).

In front-line services it makes more sense to reduce pay instead rather than numbers (there's nowhere else to go to currently) or make adjustments (i.e. no overtime but increase numbers to match up the overtime hours - thus no overtime pay is required).

djpbarry

ixoy wrote: »

Cutting numbers in areas like the many quangos or administration makes more sense, although we'd have to worry about the large lump redundancy sums they are "entitled" to (give 'em 2 weeks per year!).

It’s a necessary short-term pain for long-term gain, but the government has bottled it, it seems. I think most people were prepared to accept tax increases, but not without some reeling in of some unnecessary expenditure.

ixoy wrote: »

In front-line services it makes more sense to reduce pay instead rather than numbers (there's nowhere else to go to currently) or make adjustments (i.e. no overtime but increase numbers to match up the overtime hours - thus no overtime pay is required).

Maybe, but I’m not convinced that everyone on the front line is doing a top job. What’s needed is to take a scalpel to every level within the public services and trim away the excess.

ixoy

djpbarry wrote: »

It’s a necessary short-term pain for long-term gain, but the government has bottled it, it seems. I think most people were prepared to accept tax increases, but not without some reeling in of some unnecessary expenditure.

Correct. They've even rolled back somewhat on the pension levy by reducing pension contributions (at a cost of 150m a year). The power of SIPTU et al. is strong.

Maybe, but I’m not convinced that everyone on the front line is doing a top job. What’s needed is to take a scalpel to every level within the public services and trim away the excess.

Yep - a reform of PMDS would be wonderful and it's something advocated by many of the diligent public and civil sector workers here. The idea that all these front-line workers are working diligently in noble human efforts is as laughable as the notion that all of them are sitting around drink coffee all day.

Gumbo

ixoy wrote: »

Correct. They've even rolled back somewhat on the pension levy by reducing pension contributions (at a cost of 150m a year). The power of SIPTU et al. is strong.


Yep - a reform of PMDS would be wonderful and it's something advocated by many of the diligent public and civil sector workers here. The idea that all these front-line workers are working diligently in noble human efforts is as laughable as the notion that all of them are sitting around drink coffee all day.

Well in fairness they had to adjust it. people on lower wages were paying more than people on higher wages due to the 20% and 41% tax breaks.

ixoy

kceire wrote: »

Well in fairness they had to adjust it. people on lower wages were paying more than people on higher wages due to the 20% and 41% tax breaks.

Yep, no problems with re-adjusting if it meant they still got the same amount. A bigger problem when it means they're getting 150m less. Obvious way would have been to give tax relief on the levy at the lower rate (20%) and that would have ironed out many of the issues and given the government even more cash.

segaBOY

Blue Belle wrote: »

A recruitment freeze is effectively cutting numbers for the reasons Ive already mentioned. In times of emergency you have to prioritise. Using your analogy of managing a household budget, you dont skimp on health and safety of your family because youre short a few quid. You sacrifice something that isnt so important. Frontline emergency services were stretched to the limit even in times of the celtic tiger. This freeze could prove to be catastrophic. Pick on something that doesnt matter so much.

There has been an exponential increase in Garda numbers over the past few years with recruit classes comprising of 1200 new Guards every year.

The state can now no longer fund those who have the highest average wage among all public servants to the same extent. http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/ididojcwoj/

However look on the bright side, once the moratorium settles there is always the Garda Reserve to cheaply increase numbers on the streets so we'll have minimal impact in times of recession and increasing crime eh? Perhaps Michael McDowell wasn't the devil the Gardaí made him out to be....

Geri Boyle

That article is laughable. Did you actually read it? Garda pay is between 27,000 and 42,000. Its the higher ranks that distort the figures. Believe me, nobody joins the Gardai for the money! As for the reserve, they have no powers of arrest. While they are great for a visible presence at weekends, they are not a substitute for a member.

Gumbo

ixoy wrote: »

Yep, no problems with re-adjusting if it meant they still got the same amount. A bigger problem when it means they're getting 150m less. Obvious way would have been to give tax relief on the levy at the lower rate (20%) and that would have ironed out many of the issues and given the government even more cash.

exactly, that what we were all expecting tbh

segaBOY

Blue Belle wrote: »

That article is laughable. Did you actually read it? Garda pay is between 27,000 and 42,000. Its the higher ranks that distort the figures. Believe me, nobody joins the Gardai for the money! As for the reserve, they have no powers of arrest. While they are great for a visible presence at weekends, they are not a substitute for a member.

Hmmm, a friend of mine is a Garda, I remember when he had just completed the phase at Templemore he never stopped banging about how much they earned (in a good way)...so eh are you all that sure noone joins for the wages? And every recruit will rise increments and some will raise the ranks just like everyone else...hence the higher wages they will cost the state...you are also not taking into account the massive overtime bill they accrue.

The Garda Reserve can arrest I suspect? http://www.independent.ie/national-news/over-8000-apply-for-the-garda-reserve-704509.html

They also have the power of arrest under the Criminal Law Act, 1997 and have been trained in self defence, the use of handcuffs and garda equipment.

Perhaps you should get your facts right before peddling GRA propaganda.

LoLth

ixoy wrote: »

Yep, no problems with re-adjusting if it meant they still got the same amount. A bigger problem when it means they're getting 150m less. Obvious way would have been to give tax relief on the levy at the lower rate (20%) and that would have ironed out many of the issues and given the government even more cash.

I thought ht efact that it was a pension levy meant that it had to be taxed that way (the two tax bands) and thats what created the inequality in payments. a straightforward levy could have been granted tax relief at the lower rate but they had to go and put the word "pension" in front of it. i could be wrong, thats just what I thought the story was.

NewDubliner

LoLth wrote: »

I thought ht efact that it was a pension levy meant that it had to be taxed that way (the two tax bands) and thats what created the inequality in payments. a straightforward levy could have been granted tax relief at the lower rate but they had to go and put the word "pension" in front of it. i could be wrong, thats just what I thought the story was.

It's really a pay cut and they can't tax what you don't get.

If it were a pension contribution, that would have meant rejigging the whole PS pension entitlement and they don't have time for that right now.

jimmmy

segaBOY wrote: »

Hmmm, a friend of mine is a Garda, I remember when he had just completed the phase at Templemore he never stopped banging about how much they earned (in a good way)...so eh are you all that sure noone joins for the wages? And every recruit will rise increments and some will raise the ranks just like everyone else...hence the higher wages they will cost the state...you are also not taking into account the massive overtime bill they accrue.

Have to agree there. I know a few quite well....and the pay + perks are really good. One took early retirement + spends his winters in his villa in Portugal, living in luxury.

djpbarry

ixoy wrote: »

The idea that all these front-line workers are working diligently in noble human efforts is as laughable as the notion that all of them are sitting around drink coffee all day.

Absolutely; no matter how hard they try, they simply can't all be as superhuman as myself.

*sips coffee...*

gurramok

The population is falling due to Irish emigration and immigrants leaving hence its a wise decision to not hire anymore.