Who wrote the budget speech - IBEC

picpress

Have a look at these Quotes taken from the Pre-budget submission of the Small Firms Association and IBEC and tell me why Public Servants should spend their money in Irish Businesses this Christmas I know I'm going to keep my hands in my pocket!!!

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"As set out in Section 3 of this submission IBEC proposes that current expenditure should by reduced by €4 bn in 2010. This should comprise of a €1.4 bn reduction in public sector pay; €1.3 reduction in the social welfare bill and €1.3 cut in the delivery of other current services."

"Given that the increase in the precautionary savings rate is a central cause of the collapse of consumer spending, and domestic economic activity, a signal that the 'worst is behind us' would help stimulate consumption ."

Could this be what's coming down the tracks:-
"In the interests of national competitiveness and the quality of services provided to business and the public, it is better that the public sector pay bill is reduced through a unit cost reduction in the services delivered rather than through an excessive decrease in public sector numbers and service quality. IBEC recommends that the public sector pay and pensions bill is reduced by at least a further €2 bn during 2010 and 2011. One of the immediate measures required to achieve this is the cancellation of all pay increments. Pay increments awarded to public servants during 2009 are estimated to have cost about €250 mn p.a."

IBEC pre-budget submission 26/10/2009

“There is no way any reasonable person can expect to exit this deep recession with the standard of living they went into it with, intact. We are advocating that the €4bn cuts are shared three ways; namely one-third from a reduction in the unit cost of the provision of public services (through decreases in real public sector pay and radically altering the public sector pension provision, rather than simply cutting numbers and services), one-third through a reduction in the social welfare bill, and one-third through efficiency gains across the broader current public expenditure heads."

Small Firms Association pre-budget submission Nov 2009
The SFA Chairman, Dr Aidan O’Boyle

Riskymove

whats your point here?

the seeking of €4bn savings was highlighted long before the IBEC submission

Rujib1

picpress wrote: »

Have a look at these Quotes taken from the Pre-budget submission of the Small Firms Association and IBEC and tell me why Public Servants should spend their money in Irish Businesses this Christmas I know I'm going to keep my hands in my pocket!!!

]

Makes a change from having your hands and those of your colleagues in OUR pockets.

murphaph

300k public servants are in the minority but let's be clear here, if 300k people make a concerted effort to export their wages (which all come from private sector effort) to the UK etc. then there will be much more severe pay cuts next year. Any idiot could see that. <shakes head>

Dear oh dear. You want to hammer the last nail into the coffin of the private sector, great, that's really clever from someone whose wages are generated by that sector. :rolleyes:

ei.sdraob

Riskymove wrote: »

whats your point here?

the seeking of €4bn savings was highlighted long before the IBEC submission

next he blaming OECD and ECB

for pointing out the obvious disaster that our economy is

but sure we didnt listen to them before, didnt do us any harm right :P

Flex

Whats the problem OP? I read through the quotes and everything they said looked fine. Also, they stated that the best course of action would be to simply reduce the public sector pay bill rather than making public sector workers redundant. Or would you rather see your work mates lose their jobs so you can avoid a pay cut?

ednwireland

well considering i have levies and a 10% salary cut (private sector) and a 3 day week earlier in the year, i am heartily sick of people complaining about salry cuts
i really really think the 4bn number came from the eu and eu bank tbh. the only thing wrong with the budget was that there wasnt a root and branch reform of the public sector to provide more efficient service delivery (the people are your customers remeber) if i p**s off my customers they take their business elsewhere. and a complete reworking of expenses across the civil service / public sector to receipted expenses, there are way too many people on daily rates (college lecturers i beleive are one )

picpress

ednwireland wrote: »

well considering i have levies and a 10% salary cut (private sector) and a 3 day week earlier in the year, i am heartily sick of people complaining about salry cuts
i really really think the 4bn number came from the eu and eu bank tbh. the only thing wrong with the budget was that there wasnt a root and branch reform of the public sector to provide more efficient service delivery (the people are your customers remeber) if i p**s off my customers they take their business elsewhere. and a complete reworking of expenses across the civil service / public sector to receipted expenses, there are way too many people on daily rates (college lecturers i beleive are one )

I'm sorry to hear you are one of the people here who has had a pay cut so I'm sure you understand why the PS workers are upset taking theirs.
I would like anybody of the above people to say exactly apart from the levie what pay cuts they have taken. The majority of people knocking the PS have not themselves taken a cut as recent survey has shown. I don't want to go over old ground here but I beleive reform was offered and thrown back in our faces as part of the unions talks. It will be very hard to now go back and look for any reform. As for expenses I would look in the direction of the TDs as they are the experts I do not get any.

Welease

picpress wrote: »

I beleive reform was offered and thrown back in our faces as part of the unions talks.

Too little too late? Reform a few years ago might not have left the vast hole in the PS finances.
Everytime you see wastage in the PS, everytime you hear of unnecessary headcount and process, everytime you see rediculous benefits in some PS areas etc etc etc you need to stop and think, thats why my wages were cut and could be cut again.. then you need to stop your union blocking every attempt to remove that wastage.
If that had happened, the likelyhood is the PS bill would be a lot lower and your wages would have remain untouched.

It sucks big time for all the low and middle income PS people, but the problem is within the PS and it can only be fixed within the PS.

The_Honeybadger

picpress wrote: »

I beleive reform was offered and thrown back in our faces as part of the unions talks. .

It should not be up to the unions or the PS in general to "offer" reform, it should happen if it is needed and it obviously is. In fact isn't it already paid for as part of benchmarking? Didn't happen then and I wouldn't trust it to happen now either. If my company asks me to do something I do it, they pay me so I do as they say within reason, why is it different for the PS? And they wonder why there is a public v private divide, if anybody behaved like this in the private sector they'd be out on their ear. I hope social partnership is dead and buried, strikes won't last long as workers couldn't afford it.

brianthebard

mickeyk wrote: »

It should not be up to the unions or the PS in general to "offer" reform, it should happen if it is needed and it obviously is.

should it be up to the government to reject reform in that case so?

The_Honeybadger

brianthebard wrote: »

should it be up to the government to reject reform in that case so?

The unions proposal was rejected because of the 12 day leave proposal, not because of the offer for reform. The unions were looking for too much and the gov would have looked foolish accepting those terms. IMO if reform is needed then it should be implemented without resistance, thats how it works in any well run enterprise, given our perilous finanancial situation then surely it is in the interest of the PS to help with reform, meaning they are in a better more efficient system less likely to be cut.

picpress

mickeyk wrote: »

The unions proposal was rejected because of the 12 day leave proposal, not because of the offer for reform. The unions were looking for too much and the gov would have looked foolish accepting those terms. IMO if reform is needed then it should be implemented without resistance, thats how it works in any well run enterprise, given our perilous finanancial situation then surely it is in the interest of the PS to help with reform, meaning they are in a better more efficient system less likely to be cut.

I beleive it was rejected because it was never on in the first place. The government had made their mind up before the unions visited government buildings for the reason I outlined in my post at the start of this thread - IBEC and SFA. Its in black and white in their pre-budget submissions and surprise surprise it appears in the budget speech "The worst is behind us" just waiting for some one to come out saying there are "green shoots" next after the economic figues today. Perhaps they just voted for an extra weeks holidays from the Dail because the "futures so bright" forgive I won't be buying my shades just yet if I were them.

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The_Honeybadger

picpress wrote: »

I beleive it was rejected because it was never on in the first place. The government had made their mind up before the unions visited government buildings for the reason I outlined in my post at the start of this thread - IBEC and SFA. Its in black and white in their pre-budget submissions and surprise surprise it appears in the budget speech "The worst is behind us" just waiting for some one to come out saying there are "green shoots" next after the economic figues today. Perhaps they just voted for an extra weeks holidays from the Dail because the "futures so bright" forgive I won't be buying my shades just yet if I were them.

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Agree that they never intended to deal with the unions this time, but to be fair their demands were ludicrous and there would have been a massive public backlash if the deal they proposed was accepted. Agree also that "the worst is behind us" is pure bull and I personally think it may get alot worse as people lose their homes and banks have further losses on their balance sheets. Thanks for pointing out that many of IBECs proposals were adopted, hadn't seen that before. The main point I was making is that the very fact that the unions offered reform clearly shows that it is badly needed, and then they take it off the table. It is as if they feel they would be doing the country a huge favour by cooperating with badly needed reform, sickening! It should be a priority for unions, yet they act as if it would be some sort of patriotic gesture to help get the PS running efficiently.

picpress

mickeyk wrote: »

The main point I was making is that the very fact that the unions offered reform clearly shows that it is badly needed, and then they take it off the table. It is as if they feel they would be doing the country a huge favour by cooperating with badly needed reform, sickening! It should be a priority for unions, yet they act as if it would be some sort of patriotic gesture to help get the PS running efficiently.

Many within the public service will agree that reform is badly needed but do the government seriously think that hitting the PS first with pension levie (pay cut) then the budget pay cut and I will guess that in the next budget raised taxes will lead to reform.

There is one agenda here in town and its to reduce wages by tic tacing one against the other - public against private each one driving down the wages. I feel the veil slipped on this one when they tried to reduce the wages of the semi-state organistions. That failed so they went after the chief execs in the hope that the wages will be dropped from within -I've taken a cut so should you attitude as in the budget when they tried to claim a 15% cut for TDs which was shown up for what it was just 5% in new cuts.

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PeakOutput

picpress wrote: »

tell me why Public Servants should spend their money in Irish Businesses this Christmas

because without them you(yes you personally) have no job, or economy, or country really

brianthebard

mickeyk wrote: »

The unions proposal was rejected because of the 12 day leave proposal, not because of the offer for reform. The unions were looking for too much and the gov would have looked foolish accepting those terms. IMO if reform is needed then it should be implemented without resistance, thats how it works in any well run enterprise, given our perilous finanancial situation then surely it is in the interest of the PS to help with reform, meaning they are in a better more efficient system less likely to be cut.

agree with picpress the proposals were rejected because the govt always intended to reject them. What's your problem with the 12 day unpaid leave plan? I have no idea why you think the unions were asking for too much, the only thing they were asking for was no pay cuts, have you inside information of some sort???
If reform is to be implemented without resistance then that means govt resistance too but I notice you are quite on that front.

The_Honeybadger

brianthebard wrote: »

agree with picpress the proposals were rejected because the govt always intended to reject them. What's your problem with the 12 day unpaid leave plan? I have no idea why you think the unions were asking for too much, the only thing they were asking for was no pay cuts, have you inside information of some sort???
If reform is to be implemented without resistance then that means govt resistance too but I notice you are quite on that front.

You really think it was workable to give all the PS 12 days off? Take a teacher for example, a substitute would have been hired to replace them on their day off, no gain to taxpayer, same with guards, nurses and doctors etc. The plan was a farce and wouldnt have delivered the saving that the unions promised. If you read my post I said I agree that the gov had no intention of doing a deal, and rightly so, the plan was a joke and wouldnt have worked, anybody with any common sense can see that and that is why the puclic reaction was so viciously opposed to it. That is why I think they were asking for too much. And you have not addressed my point about reform, why should it come with strings attached if it is needed, as it clearly is?

Riskymove

mickeyk wrote: »

You really think it was workable to give all the PS 12 days off? Take a teacher for example, a substitute would have been hired to replace them on their day off, no gain to taxpayer, same with guards, nurses and doctors etc.

it was never intended to have 12 days off in one year

it was to spread over a number of years

Public servants have holidays so obviously organisations can manage a situation where people are out for a day or two

The_Honeybadger

Riskymove wrote: »

it was never intended to have 12 days off in one year

it was to spread over a number of years

Public servants have holidays so obviously organisations can manage a situation where people are out for a day or two

So the non-savings were to be spread over a few years, well thats ok then.

Riskymove

mickeyk wrote: »

So the non-savings were to be spread over a few years, well thats ok then.

"non-savings" as you call them would not arise in every situation

while its easy to dismiss the idea becuase of issues when its a nurse or guard etc, for a large part of the 350,000 public servants they would not arise

however, the State would have got far more "savings" to offset any of your "non-savings"

The_Honeybadger

Riskymove wrote: »

"non-savings" as you call them would not arise in every situation

while its easy to dismiss the idea becuase of issues when its a nurse or guard etc, for a large part of the 350,000 public servants they would not arise

however, the State would have got far more "savings" to offset any of your "non-savings"

I know that there are areas where the days could have been absorbed but I remain very sceptical that the target savings would have been met, and nobody is going to convince me that it wouldn't have impacted negatively on services either. Don't agree with pay cuts for people under 30k either though, bottom line is saving had to come from somewhere, I thought the 12 days off was a bad idea and I sure wasn't the only one who thought so, the benefit would have been for a year only and we'd be back to square one next year, with PS workers still due days off in the following years.

ei.sdraob

picpress wrote: »

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In what area of the public service do you work *
General area will do i.e. health, education etc

Time Wastage

Riskymove

mickeyk wrote: »

bottom line is saving had to come from somewhere, I thought the 12 days off was a bad idea and I sure wasn't the only one who thought so, the benefit would have been for a year only and we'd be back to square one next year, with PS workers still due days off in the following years.

again, while the saving for the 12 days was to act as the "bridging measures" for 2010 savings for 2011 on were to be found based on the reforms put forward by Unions

so therefore the benefit was ongoing

The_Honeybadger

Riskymove wrote: »

again, while the saving for the 12 days was to act as the "bridging measures" for 2010 savings for 2011 on were to be found based on the reforms put forward by Unions

so therefore the benefit was ongoing

You obviously have more faith in the unions than I do and that is fair enough. They also wanted to extend the fiscal correction by another four years, they were (are) interested in benefiting their members and not the economy as a whole, that is their job. There was never going to be agreement when the objectives of the two groups were so different. Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens from here.

murphaph

picpress wrote: »

There is one agenda here in town and its to reduce wages by tic tacing one against the other - public against private each one driving down the wages.

Ireland offer the rest of the world nothing special. No oil, no indigenous industry of note, no highly specialised products like the Scandinavians, got it so far?

That leaves us with one thing we can sell, our labour. If our labour costs significantly more than our neighbours, companies will leave (as we have seen). Cost of labour has to fall and with it our standard of living.

I'm surprised some people still haven't realised this.

murphaph

mickeyk wrote: »

You obviously have more faith in the unions than I do and that is fair enough. They also wanted to extend the fiscal correction by another four years, they were (are) interested in benefiting their members and not the economy as a whole, that is their job. There was never going to be agreement when the objectives of the two groups were so different. Guess we'll have to wait and see what happens from here.

Exactly, the unions objective is to maintain the conditions of their members at all costs. They don't care about the wider economy, even though this wider economy pays their members' wages. The unions are clueless, even more clueless than FF! The 12 days off bullsh!t would have meant even more administration (money!) and at the end of the day didn't address the fact that Irish workers (esp. public sector but not exclusively by any means) are overpaid in comparison to their European counterparts.

People can whinge on all they like about the cost of living. Multinational employers (still Ireland's only hope at the moment) couldn't give two hoots about the cost of living, just the cost of doing business. All this faffing around is only delaying the inevitible wage reductions and fall in standard of living to early 90's levels, where most of Europe is at!

The_Honeybadger

murphaph wrote: »

Exactly, the unions objective is to maintain the conditions of their members at all costs. They don't care about the wider economy, even though this wider economy pays their members' wages. The unions are clueless, even more clueless than FF! The 12 days off bullsh!t would have meant even more administration (money!) and at the end of the day didn't address the fact that Irish workers (esp. public sector but not exclusively by any means) are overpaid in comparison to their European counterparts.

People can whinge on all they like about the cost of living. Multinational employers (still Ireland's only hope at the moment) couldn't give two hoots about the cost of living, just the cost of doing business. All this faffing around is only delaying the inevitible wage reductions and fall in standard of living to early 90's levels, where most of Europe is at!

Further to your point I think the Government contols many of the costs that are out of sync in our economy, ESB and other charges. Why are they not reducing these substantially, they could also offer lower rates of employer PRSI and other simple measures to stimulate employment and help businesses who are on the edge of being viable. Our low corporation tax is not enough to expect american multinationals to come here and solve all our problems any more. Lower rates of VAT would also help and all this would have offset any pay cuts that had to be implemented. I know they would have lost revenue by doing this but we are going nowhere fast at the moment, and besides our tax rate I can't think why companies would want to come here.

macraignil

mickeyk wrote: »

You really think it was workable to give all the PS 12 days off? Take a teacher for example, a substitute would have been hired to replace them on their day off, no gain to taxpayer, same with guards, nurses and doctors etc.

I am trained as a biology teacher and paid 90euros last year to the "Teaching Council of Ireland" to register so I could take up a teaching position if it became available. I am still awaiting my certificate of registration and received a letter asking for the fee for the following year to maintain my chances of getting a job in this area. The 12 days taken off by teachers could have created openings for young teachers. Some of these would be able to sign off the dole for those days and their wage would be lower than that of the more experienced teacher. The teacher near retirement is paid almost double what an inexperienced teacher is paid if they can find work.


(I was also to have started a care work job and it has emerged that the funding may not be available. There still seems to be restrictions on filling lower paid roles in the health service and the budget announced that existing civil service pensions would not be affected by any cuts. The changes were only to be made to new entrants whos pension payment would now be based on an average and not their final wage. Am I missing something or has the government cut everybody's income except for their own, when they fail to get re-elected and have to struggle by on a mere percentage of their final ministerial wage? Could these high earning pensioners have coped with a cut in their pension? Could this money have been used to get the civil service working properly? )

Riskymove

macraignil wrote: »

The 12 days taken off by teachers could have created openings for young teachers. Some of these would be able to sign off the dole for those days and their wage would be lower than that of the more experienced teacher. The teacher near retirement is paid almost double what an inexperienced teacher is paid if they can find work.

perhaps I am wrong but you seem to missing the point of not paying all public servants for 12 days was the plan, not to not pay them all and then also pay others to replace them

Riskymove

macraignil wrote: »

Am I missing something or has the government cut everybody's income except for their own, when they fail to get re-elected and have to struggle by on a mere percentage of their final ministerial wage?

pensions have not been cut but their income was cut (EDIT therefore pensions will be affected)

there are plenty of issues around ministerial pensions but it is a mere drop in the ocean of public expenditure, scrapping it would have made little difference let alone cutting it.