Any concrete costed measures for reducing €16 billon hole in the public finances?

kippy

bluewolf wrote: »

I wasn't sure, which is why I found that link - there is a national pensions fund and they do pay into it. An actuarial study which I linked earlier showed the funding rate to be about 30%.

I know there has been no practice of having actuarial valuations for the public pensions as there is for private DB schemes, but I have a hazy recollection they might be starting

in any case, there are regular payments as shown in the link
and even if in worst case, kippy's posts about it only affecting soon to retire pensioners were true, it's still a big overall saving that could be made

When was that study done Blue wolf?
When all figures realated to pension are summed up current public sector workers pay between 11 and 14 percent of their salaries towards the public sector portion of their pension. Their final pension is inclusive of the COAP as well, so this is often ignored in any calculations.
Again, I dont suggest that pensions should be left alone, they are a very big part of overall spend.
Anyway, Im finished on this thread, way too much de ja vu.

kippy

kippy wrote: »

When was that study done Blue wolf?
When all figures realated to pension are summed up current public sector workers pay between 11 and 14 percent of their salaries towards the public sector portion of their pension. Their final pension is inclusive of the COAP as well, so this is often ignored in any calculations.
Again, I dont suggest that pensions should be left alone, they are a very big part of overall spend.
Anyway, Im finished on this thread, way too much de ja vu.

Calculations are generally based on pensionable salary which does indeed take into account the COAP

the link said the study was new in November 2011
http://pibasure.ie/news/225-true-cost-of-public-sector-pensions-bill-hits-100bn-irish-independent

11-14% of salaries is simply not enough to fund these benefits, which is why the govt must pay an additional 30% as quoted.

The reason I keep on about pensions is that I'm not talking about redundancies (although these are probably quite necessary) cutting salaries (ditto, for highest paid people), I'm not talking about severely cutting pensions, I'm not talking about removing the TFLS - I am highlighting that a very simple cut of escalation on pensions could save a lot of money. And it's something people would hardly feel.

kippy

bluewolf wrote: »

Calculations are generally based on pensionable salary which does indeed take into account the COAP

the link said the study was new in November 2011
http://pibasure.ie/news/225-true-cost-of-public-sector-pensions-bill-hits-100bn-irish-independent

11-14% of salaries is simply not enough to fund these benefits, which is why the govt must pay an additional 30% as quoted.

The reason I keep on about pensions is that I'm not talking about redundancies (although these are probably quite necessary) cutting salaries (ditto, for highest paid people), I'm not talking about severely cutting pensions, I'm not talking about removing the TFLS - I am highlighting that a very simple cut of escalation on pensions could save a lot of money. And it's something people would hardly feel.

I'd agree broadly with that summation, however I feel that we have major issues with pensions in general in this country, some people get too much, some too little, very few fund any section of their state pension. The biggest issue with the public sector pension, is the link to final salary as opposed to linking to average salary over service, this is what pushes up the funding costs and means that overall the worker does not fund as much of the final pension pot as they should.
I suppose the 5% used in that article is the amount paid towards the total pot which is a fair figure.

Overall, I think the pension arrangements of public and private sector as well as state pensions need to be completly overhauled (I have stated this in the past)

Thats a very interesting article btw, I hadnt see it before. It looks very accurate and covers more accurately than any I have read before the reality of the situation.

John Doe1

sell our kids into slavery?

KeithAFC

John Doe1 wrote: »

sell our kids into slavery?

The kids will never be better than the grown up man..:pac:

europa11

~ Merge the services of our 40 or so City and County Councils into no more than 7 Regional Authorities.
If anyone cribs re G.A.A. identity, etc. tell 'em that our 'counties' were by and large British creations anyway (that should bring the Shinners on side or at least keep them quiet for once).

~ Quangos, immediate cull of at least 60% with review of all remaining ones.

~ Cut all politicians/CS Pensions until age 65 (as mentioned earlier) and ditto regarding comments to scrap "Irish Aid", although I.A. offices should remain open to accept inward donations.

~ Scrap the Croke Park Agreement. Actually don't scrap it, shred it.

~ Career criminals to be sent to less comfortable island-based WW2 style prison huts off atlantic coast (Charlies' island could be first). Sell prisons in urban areas or convert to schools/museums.

~ Free Legal Aid system review, limit use of FLA to no more than three per person in lifetime, habitual criminals might think twice about running up convictions if paying for their briefs.

~ Privatise Cork and Shannon Airports.

~ Stop paying for the building of UK motorways (i.e. Derry to Aughnacloy), this promise was made by Bertie. Infact(a), any deals struck by that cnut should be reviewed regarding costs.

~The Seanad - kill it off now.

~ Close a few more embassies.

bamboozle

europa11 wrote: »

~ Merge the services of our 40 or so City and County Councils into no more than 7 Regional Authorities.
If anyone cribs re G.A.A. identity, etc. tell 'em that our 'counties' were by and large British creations anyway (that should bring the Shinners on side or at least keep them quiet for once).

~ Quangos, immediate cull of at least 60% with review of all remaining ones.

~ Cut all politicians/CS Pensions until age 65 (as mentioned earlier) and ditto regarding comments to scrap "Irish Aid", although I.A. offices should remain open to accept inward donations.

~ Scrap the Croke Park Agreement. Actually don't scrap it, shred it.

~ Career criminals to be sent to less comfortable island-based WW2 style prison huts off atlantic coast (Charlies' island could be first). Sell prisons in urban areas or convert to schools/museums.

~ Free Legal Aid system review, limit use of FLA to no more than three per person in lifetime, habitual criminals might think twice about running up convictions if paying for their briefs.

~ Privatise Cork and Shannon Airports.

~ Stop paying for the building of UK motorways (i.e. Derry to Aughnacloy), this promise was made by Bertie. Infact(a), any deals struck by that cnut should be reviewed regarding costs.

~The Seanad - kill it off now.

~ Close a few more embassies.

if we did the opposite of what bertie did we'd be well on the way to recovery.

great point re the FLA.

Wibbs

relax carry on wrote: »

Thanks for that. Any idea how much that would close the 16 billon gap by? And do you think there would be much opposition?

It would make us more efficient. This would help grow the economy. Particularly if we looked closer at other costs that are anti enterprise(fuel and leccy prices for a start). Yes there would be opposition, but the fact is folks we're boned and we have to start somewhere.

As for the troika and the EU, I think we still need to play hardball. We held a good hand a year ago and fcuk all has actually changed though it's not at the top of the news. Spain is contracting and her dole queues are getting longer particularly among young people 18-30. That's really bad and worse than the overal stat looks, bad enough as it is. Portugal is in a well dodgy fiscal state and Italy is in a holding pattern, as for Greece... The risk of contagion is most certainly still there and we should use that to get better deals on these debts IMHO.

KeithAFC wrote: »

1 child per family policy is something which should perhaps be looked at. I ain't sure if the economic climate now can support larger families.

We've one of the lowest populations densities in the EU(as do yourselves in Ulster). We've also one of the highest if not the highest birth rates. Italy for example are not even replacing themselves. Indeed I'll put money down now that this stat will stand to us down the line. It's effectively what started the celtic tiger before it went nuts. A large babyboomer wave came along between the mid 80s-90's and they needed housing and services etc.

A cut in social welfare also is another good point which I have seen mentioned. Less put into foreign aid. For example, Palestine and the €7.5 million provided to Palestine by Irish Aid in 2007. Look to lower that. That is a lot of money which could be used for the Irish people in the Irish Republic.

Would that Palestine was the most of it..Palestinian aid is a drop in the bucket Keith. The most up to date figure I read was well over half a billion to overseas aid.

Tax the rich a bit more.

Difficult as the rich will just move. That's what too many on the extreme left neglect to understand. This will reduce investment in the country and reduce the impetus too create wealth and therefore jobs and industry in the first place. If I had a good idea and backing why set up in a country where more of your earnings will be taken away? Bad plan.

kincsem

relax carry on wrote: »

Have you actually thought about which ones to cut and which ones to keep? How much will it save and what do you do with the staff?

Is that information available, or is it difficult to gather? I'd say it is difficult to gather.

From Wiki: Ireland in 2006 had more than 800 quangos, 482 at national and 350 at local level, with a total of 5,784 individual appointees and a combined annual budget of €13 billion. Remember the presidential election? One of the candidates had quite a few nice little appointments.
Shane Ross wrote that it is now 2,600+ quangos and the boards stuffed with political appointees. That is a tripling of quangos is a few years. A list here http://quangos-ireland.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Irish_Quangos but no staff numbers or costs surprisingly.

You would probably need to "freedom of information act" every one of the quangos to find out what they do (or don't do).

I doubt that list is complete but searching with the word "food" gives

Scientific Committee of the Food Safety Authority
Food Safety Authority of Ireland
Food Safety Promotion Board
Food Safety Consultative Council

c_man

Get rid of a sh!tload of the councils around the country. It's madness the amount of government that seems to be needed for a relatively small population.

relax carry on

Thanks for all the replies. Thought I might get a few more of the posters from the Anti House hold charge on but there you go.
So the general consensus seems to be cuts alone rather than taxation and cuts to close the 16 Billon gap. Do you really think there is 16 billon of savings to be made by reducing the public sector pay/pension bill; the Social Welfare bill and "wastage" in the administration of the country? Surely taxation must form part of the solution. And not just the "tax the rich" solution which keeps coming up.

kippy

relax carry on wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. Thought I might get a few more of the posters from the Anti House hold charge on but there you go.
So the general consensus seems to be cuts alone rather than taxation and cuts to close the 16 Billon gap. Do you really think there is 16 billon of savings to be made by reducing the public sector pay/pension bill; the Social Welfare bill and "wastage" in the administration of the country? Surely taxation must form part of the solution. And not just the "tax the rich" solution which keeps coming up.

Nah, there is a need for taxation as well, obviously, however pouring taxtake into bloated and inefficient systems is just a waste in most peoples opinion.
Sustainable taxtake is required and this would include water and housing taxation, however the communications that the housing charge pays for local amenities etc and local amenities will be cut if the charge isn't paid annoys me.
As stated above why just charge a homeowner for a local amenity, everyone uses then, tenants, the families of homeowners, etc etc.
Call a spade a spade, then I'd be somewhat happier paying it, but I wont be looking forward to paying it next year when its up on a couple of grand.

Income tax cannot take a huge amount more, looking at the figures, VAT is too high as it is, and there is too much uncertainty out there.

squod

relax carry on wrote: »

Do you really think there is 16 billon of savings to be made by reducing the public sector pay/pension bill;

€186bn due in pension payments alone. So yeah. It's possible. Hiring process engineers to fix process problems in each of the departments would be at very least cost neutral and at very best solve some of the funding issues facing this country in the medium and long term.



Taking another look at the wind pumped hydro projects should be done. I honestly don't understand why we're ignoring this. It should be a nice little earner for us.

Doc Ruby

kippy wrote: »

however pouring taxtake into bloated and inefficient systems is just a waste in most peoples opinion.

This, for me, is the most important point. I don't mind paying taxes but I demand value for money.

kippy

Doc Ruby wrote: »

This, for me, is the most important point. I don't mind paying taxes but I demand value for money.

And this is now a key issue.
People have less and less disposable income and they have a right to know where and how the money they lose in direct and indirect taxes is spent.
Rightly so might I add.

We demand more accountability (proper accountability) and it is very slow coming round tbh.

Chucky the tree

Wibbs wrote: »

. A large babyboomer wave came along between the mid 80s-90's and they needed housing and services etc.

A baby-boom actually never occurred in Ireland during that time.

kippy

Chucky the tree wrote: »

A baby-boom actually never occurred in Ireland during that time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland
You can see when the rates were high, moreso around 1980, the popes children so to speak.
These people were in their 20's during the celtic tiger era.
A large part of the demand for housing was also driven by people returning to Ireland, or those who came to Ireland from Europe and abroad to work.

Chucky the tree

kippy wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Republic_of_Ireland
You can see when the rates were high, moreso around 1980, the popes children so to speak.
These people were in their 20's during the celtic tiger era.
A large part of the demand for housing was also driven by people returning to Ireland, or those who came to Ireland from Europe and abroad to work.

Not sure I'd say they were high in 1980. They were the same as they had been the past 50 years or so.

relax carry on

relax carry on wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. Thought I might get a few more of the posters from the Anti House hold charge on but there you go.
So the general consensus seems to be cuts alone rather than taxation and cuts to close the 16 Billon gap. Do you really think there is 16 billon of savings to be made by reducing the public sector pay/pension bill; the Social Welfare bill and "wastage" in the administration of the country? Surely taxation must form part of the solution. And not just the "tax the rich" solution which keeps coming up.

Here's a thought. The gap is something like €16 billion. The public sector pay bill is something like €16 billion. Let's pretend for a moment you could legally execute public servants, with no comeback in terms of compensation or anything like that. In fact, because I'm feeling particularly Genghis Khan-ish about the PS this evening, I'm also going to say that we won't waste any money giving their widows/widowers and orphans any pensions. It's extreme I know, but bear with me, and let's see how the sums work out.

If we shot dead half the public service, that's about 150,000 people, we'd save €8 billion, right?

Actually, wrong. We'd cut spending by €8 billion, but we'd also cut revenues, because the people we've just shot dead pay back a lot of that €8 billion to the Exchequer in PAYE, PRSI, USC, pension contributions and indirect taxes on their spending. It's hard to say exactly how much, but if you were to guess a figure of about 45% you wouldn't be too far wrong.

So we'd cut spending by €8 billion (yaaaaaaayy!) and cut Exchequer revenues by about €3.5 billion (boooooooooo!) - leaving us with a net saving of about €4.5 billion. That's a bit disappointing - works out at oooooh, about €30K per year per execution - but given the parlous state of the public finances an opportunity to save €4.5 billion is not to be dismissed lightly.

So, in summary, here's the really unnerving thought. If we went out and put bullets in the heads of 150,000 Irish public servants, we'd still have a Budget gap of €11.5 billion. :eek:

With that in mind, would someone please answer the obvious question? If shooting half the public service dead won't save the country, why are we being so utterly naive as to think that any of this EU/IMF guff actually will?

Doc Ruby

Deleted User wrote: »

The public sector pay bill is something like €16 billion.

So what you're saying is the pay per public sector worker is €53,000 or thereabouts? Interesting.

kippy

Deleted User wrote: »

Here's a thought. The gap is something like €16 billion. The public sector pay bill is something like €16 billion. Let's pretend for a moment you could legally execute public servants, with no comeback in terms of compensation or anything like that. In fact, because I'm feeling particularly Genghis Khan-ish about the PS this evening, I'm also going to say that we won't waste any money giving their widows/widowers and orphans any pensions. It's extreme I know, but bear with me, and let's see how the sums work out.

If we shot dead half the public service, that's about 150,000 people, we'd save €8 billion, right?

Actually, wrong. We'd cut spending by €8 billion, but we'd also cut revenues, because the people we've just shot dead pay back a lot of that €8 billion to the Exchequer in PAYE, PRSI, USC, pension contributions and indirect taxes on their spending. It's hard to say exactly how much, but if you were to guess a figure of about 45% you wouldn't be too far wrong.

So we'd cut spending by €8 billion (yaaaaaaayy!) and cut Exchequer revenues by about €3.5 billion (boooooooooo!) - leaving us with a net saving of about €4.5 billion. That's a bit disappointing - works out at oooooh, about €30K per year per execution - but given the parlous state of the public finances an opportunity to save €4.5 billion is not to be dismissed lightly.

So, in summary, here's the really unnerving thought. If we went out and put bullets in the heads of 150,000 Irish public servants, we'd still have a Budget gap of €11.5 billion. :eek:

With that in mind, would someone please answer the obvious question? If shooting half the public service dead won't save the country, why are we being so utterly naive as to think that any of this EU/IMF guff actually will?

I do believe that the goverment (whoever that happens to be,) the IMF and the EU are assuming that at some point in the next 4-8 years there will be a global and a national bounce in the economy due to some form of major growth. As such the really nasty decisions are being put off for as long as possible. If that means we need another bailout, then so be it.
Of course, this can kicking rarely ends up well.

Wibbs

Chucky the tree wrote: »

A baby-boom actually never occurred in Ireland during that time.

Of course not, that's why I said "babyboomer". The babies were born(roughly) between the late 60's to mid 70's. We were famous in the 80's for having the youngest population percentage in Europe.

Doc Ruby

Doc Ruby wrote: »

So what you're saying is the pay per public sector worker is €53,000 or thereabouts? Interesting.

What I'm saying is that if we execute half the PS, the country is still screwed. With that in mind, do you have any ideas that might actually help deal with the big hole in the public finances?

dxhound2005

relax carry on wrote: »

Thanks for all the replies. Thought I might get a few more of the posters from the Anti House hold charge on but there you go.
So the general consensus seems to be cuts alone rather than taxation and cuts to close the 16 Billon gap. Do you really think there is 16 billon of savings to be made by reducing the public sector pay/pension bill; the Social Welfare bill and "wastage" in the administration of the country? Surely taxation must form part of the solution. And not just the "tax the rich" solution which keeps coming up.

There have been cuts in PS numbers and the overall wage bill and this is continuing.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1205/budget3-business.html

Because of reduced numbers, pay cuts and the ongoing pension related deduction, the overall cost of paying public servants will have fallen by €3.5 billion or 20% over the seven year period from 2008 to 2015.

We have a bigger population than ever before and even with the unemployment numbers now there are 1.8 million at work compared to 1.2 million 20 years ago. These factors would suggest that it will be difficult to reduce the PS numbers much more than what is planned.

Pensions weren't reduced yet and Child Benefit at €1700 per child per year tax free is still very generous. These are among the big ticket items in SW spending that will probably be reduced in the next budget. Income tax could rise as well.

The country will just keep borrowing and going deeper into debt just like nearly every country in the world. I don't understand economics but if you take the long view it seems that booms and busts just repeat themselves in the capitalist system. We will almost certainly have another housing bubble in the next 20 to 40 years.

If you take the really long view the whole place was covered by a mile of ice 10000 years ago and will probably be covered by a mile of ice sometime in the next 10000 years. I remember real poverty in my time and what we have now is nothing like that. People here mostly don't realise how well off they are compared to anytime in the past and compared to the shocking poverty endured by hundreds of millions of people in other countries.