Austerity hitting the Defence Forces

VONSHIRACH

According to PDFORRA, ABOUT 1,300 members need supplementary welfare allowance to make ends meet. I find this hard to believe, sounds like pre-budget PR.

http://www.rte.ie/aertel//desktopxhtml/110-1.html

Idbatterim

Thats funny, cost doesnt seem to be a big issue when it comes to who they choose when awarding tenders, maybe they should start there...

mariaalice

VONSHIRACH wrote: »

According to PDFORRA, ABOUT 1,300 members need supplementary welfare allowance to make ends meet. I find this hard to believe, sounds like pre-budget PR.

http://www.rte.ie/aertel//desktopxhtml/110-1.html

There are lots of lower paid public servants and if you have a large family and are low paid why would you not get family income supplement, in fact thats what social welfare should be used for as income support for those who are working. I don't get why you or PDFORRA have a problem with that.

John Mongo

VONSHIRACH wrote: »

According to PDFORRA, ABOUT 1,300 members need supplementary welfare allowance to make ends meet. I find this hard to believe, sounds like pre-budget PR.

http://www.rte.ie/aertel//desktopxhtml/110-1.html

I've no idea if the 1,300 figure is accurate but I do personally know of a few lads who qualify for FIS at the minute.

mariaalice wrote: »

There are lots of lower paid public servants and if you have a large family and are low paid why would you not get family income supplement, in fact thats what social welfare should be used for as income support for those who are working. I don't get why you or PDFORRA have a problem with that.

Yeah it's a bit mind boggling. Obviously any kind of pay increase is out of the question, so regardless of whether there's any other moves that would effect pay or not, they'll still be claiming FIS.

Gumbo

VONSHIRACH wrote: »

According to PDFORRA, ABOUT 1,300 members need supplementary welfare allowance to make ends meet. I find this hard to believe, sounds like pre-budget PR.

http://www.rte.ie/aertel//desktopxhtml/110-1.html

I can totally believe this.

mariaalice wrote: »

There are lots of lower paid public servants and if you have a large family and are low paid why would you not get family income supplement, in fact thats what social welfare should be used for as income support for those who are working. I don't get why you or PDFORRA have a problem with that.

+1

I said it here a few years back when posters were screaming for Public Service paycuts, and i said, if you cut anymore from a certain pay bracket, they will just get it back in social payments.

I posted then after the wages were cut, and some people were posting smugly, and i pointed out that i now had more money in my hand every week due to increased FIS payment. That shut them up at the time.

touts

A better question for the economy is exactly what are 1300+ members of the defence forces doing every day? Any time we send a group over seas it seems to be less than 100. The most you ever see on a cash convoy are 8-10 but there can't be more than 10 escorted convoys going on at any one time so at most that's 100. How many bomb disposal guys are there. Again there can't be more than 100 in that department.

So what do the other 1000+ do and why do we need them? And don't forget their higher paid officers and admin staff, their extremely expensive equipment and their various large bases and training lands? This is a genuine question. Why can the elite groups (bomb disposal, rangers, armed escort teams etc) be rolled into the Gardai and the rest of the Army shut down. I can see why we need a Navy and an Air Corps given that most of our territory is sea but the army seems no more justifiable than a second chamber in the oireachteas. If they can't make a living as soldiers perhaps they and we are better off cutting our losses and scrapping the Army.

Icepick

Even if you are on full-time minimum wage, you shouldn't need any extra cash.
So what is this nonsense?

spank_inferno

Im assuming its just privates who would get this?

Once they rise through the ranks their pay rises.

johnr1

I started a thread on the usefulness of the Army last year in AH. The main conclusions seemed to be as follows:

1. The main thing they do is the peacekeeping abroad, for which we get paid by the UN, but at nothing like what their training or upkeep costs.

2. Many junior soldiers receive FIS. No problem with this.

3. The waste in the officer classes is appalling but juniors would be court-martialled if they spoke out about this. I got PMs from serving soldiers telling me of private valets for officers, waste of money on Victorian era perks, just crazy sh1t.

4. Because of this current western world de-ification of armed forces, we may not criticize them in any way however unnecessary or ineffective they may be. Brings to mind the old adage: 'to discover who rules, you must first find out who you are not permitted to criticize'

5. If we were to be attacked by any hostile neighbours, the army would be very quickly overrun, ergo, they are an unnecessary pointless expense.

I suggested that we spend the money on our navy to maybe stop a little bit of the theft of our fish which goes on day after day, as well as helping with drug importantion enforcement.
This didn't recieve much support.

The loudest voices there were the "We support our boyz abroad" wannabe US soldier boy wags.

.

BaronVon

Maybe we could outsource our border protection to the UK? For a country that always remains neutral, you would have to question the need for ten thousand soldiers.

Given we're an island, I always thought our navy should be bigger than our army.

chopper6

touts wrote: »

A better question for the economy is exactly what are 1300+ members of the defence forces doing every day? Any time we send a group over seas it seems to be less than 100. The most you ever see on a cash convoy are 8-10 but there can't be more than 10 escorted convoys going on at any one time so at most that's 100. How many bomb disposal guys are there. Again there can't be more than 100 in that department.

So what do the other 1000+ do and why do we need them? And don't forget their higher paid officers and admin staff, their extremely expensive equipment and their various large bases and training lands? This is a genuine question. Why can the elite groups (bomb disposal, rangers, armed escort teams etc) be rolled into the Gardai and the rest of the Army shut down. I can see why we need a Navy and an Air Corps given that most of our territory is sea but the army seems no more justifiable than a second chamber in the oireachteas. If they can't make a living as soldiers perhaps they and we are better off cutting our losses and scrapping the Army.

Why should the army be shut down?

It's providing employment for people and it's part of our secondary emergency forces as welll as being on standby in the event of national emergencies inclusding disasters,terrorism or strikes.

Maybe we should put them all on the dole and leqave the country dependent on overseas aid in such an eventuality?

touts

chopper6 wrote: »

Why should the army be shut down?

It's providing employment for people and it's part of our secondary emergency forces as welll as being on standby in the event of national emergencies inclusding disasters,terrorism or strikes.

Maybe we should put them all on the dole and leqave the country dependent on overseas aid in such an eventuality?

We could solve the unemployment crisis by making creating 400K+ state jobs. But we don't so the employment argument doesn't really stand.

During recent extreme weather events such as flooding and snow there were very few soldiers deployed to help. Help came from the civil defence, local councils and neighbours. If a major national emergency did hit (say an earthquake) we would be reliant on overseas aid anyway and the army as it stands would be an expensive drop in the ocean.

As to terrorism we could move the elite wings (bomb disposal, rangers etc) into the Gardai. We could have a career path from the Gardai to those wings so anyone who wanted to pursue a career with explosives could still do so. Even if we moved all the soldiers into some sort of armed wing of the gardai we would still make massive savings in terms of their administration.

Finally Strikes? Maybe back in the 70s but the days of having soldiers manning power stations or driving buses are long gone. By the time we would have them trained up on how to work the modern equipment the strike would be long over.

chopper6

touts wrote: »

We could solve the unemployment crisis by making creating 400K+ state jobs. But we don't so the employment argument doesn't really stand.

During recent extreme weather events such as flooding and snow there were very few soldiers deployed to help. Help came from the civil defence, local councils and neighbours. If a major national emergency did hit (say an earthquake) we would be reliant on overseas aid anyway and the army as it stands would be an expensive drop in the ocean.

As to terrorism we could move the elite wings (bomb disposal, rangers etc) into the Gardai. We could have a career path from the Gardai to those wings so anyone who wanted to pursue a career with explosives could still do so. Even if we moved all the soldiers into some sort of armed wing of the gardai we would still make massive savings in terms of their administration.

Finally Strikes? Maybe back in the 70s but the days of having soldiers manning power stations or driving buses are long gone. By the time we would have them trained up on how to work the modern equipment the strike would be long over.

So they should be consigned to the dole where they're eating into the exchequer instead of contributing to it?

And good luck getting the gardai and the armed forces to merge...they're completely different entities....teh army is in no way concerned with law enforcement and the gardai do not fulfil our UN mandate by sending members overseas as peacekeepers.

newmug

infacteh wrote: »

Maybe we could outsource our border protection to the UK?

That didn't quite work out the last time we tried it.

touts

chopper6 wrote: »

So they should be consigned to the dole where they're eating into the exchequer instead of contributing to it?

And good luck getting the gardai and the armed forces to merge...they're completely different entities....teh army is in no way concerned with law enforcement and the gardai do not fulfil our UN mandate by sending members overseas as peacekeepers.

How exactly do the Army contribute to the exchequer? The UN hardly ever pay their bills and the bank convoys cant bring in millions unless the lads are robbing the trucks they are protecting.

The elite elements of the army would be no different to the Gardai than say the CSI is to the foot patrols is to the CAB. Different expertise under one unified administrarion.