€490m meant for local services diverted to Irish Water

ahnowbrowncow

homerjay2005 wrote: »

to put things into perspective, the CEs salary would be comparable or even better, than the leaders of most countries in the World.

according to a guardian report into public finances, just under 70 public funded people earn more than Obama in this country which is simply astounding.

But he has a fantastic CV.

And he's already shown that he's worth every cent, paying consultants to make the decisions he's paid to make.

Thankfully he'll also get a bonus for reaching those very demanding targets that he set.

Victor

Irish Steve wrote: »

And probably also has useful implications for the benefit in kind of a company car.

Perhaps you might want to think that out again.

homerjay2005 wrote: »

according to a guardian report into public finances, just under 70 public funded people earn more than Obama in this country which is simply astounding.

Linky?

Cantona's Collars

Victor wrote: »

Perhaps you might want to think that out again.

Linky?

http://www.thejournal.ie/29-irish-water-staff-are-earning-over-e100000-1279724-Jan2014/

The feckin' thing isn't even up & running properly yet bonuses and massive salaries are built into their contracts.

One LA engineer was mentioned on the radio the other day,it was claimed he moved to Irish Water but was now on less money,I seriously doubt that.It's not a vocation he's on.

Victor

zerks wrote: »

http://www.thejournal.ie/29-irish-water-staff-are-earning-over-e100000-1279724-Jan2014/

Sorry, I was reliably informed I would be provided with a link to the Guardian.

Cantona's Collars

Victor wrote: »

Sorry, I was reliably informed I would be provided with a link to the Guardian.

You are being pedantic for the sake of it,all the gory details are in that link in black & white,there's even some nice charts to make it easy to read.These figures are now public knowledge,who cares about a link when the big picture is the amount of waste going on which we are paying for.

Boombastic

310 staff and 29 senior managers...1 senior manager for every 10 staff......the staff mustn't be great if they need that much managing...this does not include the junior managers, how many of them is there??

Phoebas

Boombastic wrote: »

310 staff and 29 senior managers...1 senior manager for every 10 staff......the staff mustn't be great if they need that much managing...this does not include the junior managers, how many of them is there??

Are all the managers people managers?
You know that you can be a manager without having any staff?

Irish Steve

Victor wrote: »

Perhaps you might want to think that out again.

If I had a choice of a 10.5 k payment that's taxable, or having to pay BIK on a company car, given that BIK is charged on the original sale price of the car, regardless of age, I think that having the cash sum is likely to be a lot more attractive. I am also going to presume for now in the absence of full disclosure that such a scheme avoids the "hassles" of having to provide vouchers and other paperwork to cover business mileage.

You may be very sure that it's a carefully worked out scheme that has "advantages" over the old concept of the company providing the car, and the employee/director claiming business mileage expenses.

I have no problem with appropriate rates of payment etc for the job, as long as the process of determining "appropriate" is open to public scrutiny if the organisation is funded by tax payers money.

What's becoming very clear is that there are a large number of people in high places that are being paid obscene sums for doing a very ordinary job, and getting significant "extras" in addition, and the only people that have to approve those payments are a close circle of people within the organisation. Where that organisation is state funded, that's unacceptable.

To be absolutely clear, things like €400 K for Rehab CEO. unjustifiable. Taking pension top up from charitable funds as is being seen with CRC. Unjustifiable.


IW has a disproportionate number of "state" employees at the top, which makes me very suspicious of the criteria that were used to place the job vacancy adverts, and the manner in which the candidates were selected.

The funding will be entirely derived from charges over which there will be very little real control, to all intents and purposes, it's taxation, so the organisation spending that money needs to be open to scrutiny at a much higher level than would be the case with a private company, in that as a monopoly supplier, with no competition, or choice for the "consumer", if IW is not very carefully controlled, it WILL go the way that so many other semi states have gone, and become a comfortable money pit for the people at the top, and be underfunded at the sharp end. There are plenty of other examples of this happening elsewhere.

It's time to say enough, and to introduce real controls over the people and organisations that are spending our money.

The PAC are showing signs of becoming more active in that area, it needs to be stronger, and to have the ability to remove people that are seen to have been acting in a manner inappropriate to their position, or acting against the wider public interest.

The culture in many areas of state and semi states is that "they" are somehow special, and deserve special perks and payments that are somehow inappropriate for "normal" people. Wrong, so wrong it's unforgivable that it was allowed in the first place.

The same can be said about bankers bonus schemes. Sitting at a keyboard all day and pressing enter at the right moments is not a challenging job to do. Yes, that's a slight oversimplification in some ways, but the underlying question is why should a banker get massive bonuses for doing that, and a person doing effectively the same for a small company not get an obscene bonus for doing the job they are there for.

Phoebas

Irish Steve wrote: »

The same can be said about bankers bonus schemes. Sitting at a keyboard all day and pressing enter at the right moments is not a challenging job to do. Yes, that's a slight oversimplification in some ways, but the underlying question is why should a banker get massive bonuses for doing that, and a person doing effectively the same for a small company not get an obscene bonus for doing the job they are there for.

:pac:

My GP also gets paid too much. Writing scribbles on prescription pads all day - piece of piss!

steddyeddy

Victor wrote: »

Perhaps you might want to think that out again.

Linky?

Have you any views on the massive amounts of money spent on this thing? You seem to be picking apart other people's views without offering your own.

Anita B Jaynow

Meh local services won't be much good without water!.

Cantona's Collars

It get's more laughable by the day,4000 staff to do the jobs that less than half that amount are more than capable of doing.
The denials of having to pay more to cover this waste is a lie too,seeing as just a fortnight ago Irish Water wanted to be given the go ahead to charge extra if consumers don't use enough water.What happened to the "use less,pay less" mantra that they were using??

The Taoiseach has denied taxpayers will end up paying more for water as a result of set up and staff costs at Irish Water.

It's emerged that the State could be spending €two billion more than needed on employees.

The ESRI says Irish Water needs about 1700 staff, but agreements with local authorities mean it will actually be paying over 4,000 people.

http://newstalk.ie/Top-economist-warns-Irish-Water-overspending-by-2-billion

No Pants

Sounds like a TUPE situation to me. If it is, then there should be some savings made as pension entitlements would change.

Victor

zerks wrote: »

It get's more laughable by the day,4000 staff to do the jobs that less than half that amount are more than capable of doing.

That is the existing situation, which Irish Water will change.

Cantona's Collars

Victor wrote: »

That is the existing situation, which Irish Water will change.

Gonna be hard to change when contracts that were signed will more or less mean high paid staff will get paid to do nothing as they can't be laid off.Who dreams up these contracts.In my job if there's no work for you to do then it's bye bye.But where I work isn't using taxpayers money,seems that it's ok to waste money keeping people employed to do nothing so long as Joe & Josephine soap are footing the bill.

Listening to Ray D'Arcy doing the paper review this morning and he read out the above.Just the thing to cheer you up as you start the day.

No Pants

zerks wrote: »

In my job if there's no work for you to do then it's bye bye.

No redundancy?

Phill Ewinn

No Pants wrote: »

No redundancy?

Many people work on rolling contracts, are bullied out of their jobs by management or are given a short number of hours so as to make working in that job as financially difficult as possible.

TL;DR. Some bosses are scum

tayto lover

Heard the whole Irish Water thing being described as Faucet's Circus.

Banjo String

No Pants wrote: »

No redundancy?

I know of many people let go during the economic downturn, who, got no redundancy, bar what the state paid them. The company's these people worked for were (or claimed to be) in such a financial mess.

Besides. If Irish Water have TWICE the amount of staff (more than twice) it actually needs, with contracts in place to 2026, why isn't state redundancy an option here?

Cantona's Collars

Banjo String wrote: »

I know of many people let go during the economic downturn, who, got no redundancy, bar what the state paid them. The company's these people worked for were (or claimed to be) in such a financial mess.

Besides. If Irish Water have TWICE the amount of staff (more than twice) it actually needs, with contracts in place to 2026, why isn't state redundancy an option here?

Makes more sense for Irish Water to keep paying their wages even though there's no actual work for them to do.:mad: