Public service pay cut?

addaword

Rent is half the price down the country compared to Dublin.

Chiparus

addaword wrote: »

Rent is half the price down the country compared to Dublin.

So?

addaword

Chiparus wrote: »

So?

Your post was referencing rent and cost of living in Dublin.

Chiparus

addaword wrote: »

Your post was referencing rent and cost of living in Dublin.

Comparing Dublin to Auckland,
Im sure rent is half the price in rural NZ compared to Auckland.

addaword

Chiparus wrote: »

Comparing Dublin to Auckland,
Im sure rent is half the price in rural NZ compared to Auckland.

And the Irish Times last year found Irish hospital consultants were paid 36% more than their counterparts in New Zealand.

Even though the pandemic has not hit New Zealand as bad as it has hit Europe, some top people paid by the government in New Zealand are voluntarily taking a 20% cut in salary now.

Chiparus

addaword wrote: »

And the Irish Times last year found Irish hospital consultants were paid 36% more than their counterparts in New Zealand.

Even though the pandemic has not hit New Zealand as bad as it has hit Europe, some top people paid by the government in New Zealand are voluntarily taking a 20% cut in salary now.

Why are Irish doctors emigrating to New Zealand, why are Kiwi doctors not wanting to work in Eire?

Possibly its because the IT figures only refer to base pay, again no overtime payments for Irish consultants.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12190555

addaword

Chiparus wrote: »

Why are Irish doctors emigrating to New Zealand, why are Kiwi doctors not wanting to work in Eire?

Some New Zealanders do work and live in Ireland. People go to other countries all the time for experience, adventure, social, travel reasons.

What do you think of some of the top people in New Zealand paid by the government there voluntarily taking a 20% payout due to covit?

AndrewJRenko

addaword wrote: »

And the Irish Times last year found Irish hospital consultants were paid 36% more than their counterparts in New Zealand.

International comparisons like this are meaningless unless you consider cost of living and taxation.

Chiparus

addaword wrote: »

Some New Zealanders do work and live in Ireland. People go to other countries all the time for experience, adventure, social, travel reasons.

What do you think of some of the top people in New Zealand paid by the government there voluntarily taking a 20% payout due to covit?

I would wager that far more Irish work in New Zealand than the reverse , certainly for hospital consultants.
Never heard of Kiwis in the public service, there are hundreds of Irish working in the NZ public service.

as to the salary sacrifice, I would say thats a political stunt.

Would you give up 20% of your pay?

I would not as I would lose my house.

addaword

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

International comparisons like this are meaningless.

Reports have quite a lot of meaning when they find Irish consultants are the third highest paid in the world, and the country is adding 30 billion to our 200 billion national debt this year.

Ninthlife

addaword wrote: »

Reports have quite a lot of meaning when they find Irish consultants are the third highest paid in the world, and the country is adding 30 billion to our 200 billion national debt this year.

What exactly is your job?

Chiparus

addaword wrote: »

Reports have quite a lot of meaning when they find Irish consultants are the third highest paid in the world, and the country is adding 30 billion to our 200 billion national debt this year.

Why are european doctors not flooding in, why are there over 500 consultant vacancies??

thats 20% of positions unfilled, by Irish doctors that are emigrating to UK, Austalia, US , Canada and New Zealand.

Mongfinder General

addaword wrote: »

Some of the staff in our universities are on over €200,000 per year. A 20% pay cut would still leave them on over 160k. Plenty, when you remember the President (prime minister) of Spain is on just half that, at 82k.

So if these staff members are government employees their marginal tax rate is above 60% - 40% paye, 4% paye, 7% usc, pension levy 10%. So that €40k saving equates to about €16k as the other €24k would have been taken in taxes anyway.
The elephant in the room is not public sector pay - it is the welfare state. How on earth do we go from having 15% unemployment in 2013 to 5% unemployment in 2020 but still spend more on welfare than we did in 2013?
All income, earned or unearned should be subject to income tax. This needs to include long term welfare recipients.

Ninthlife

Mongfinder General wrote: »

So if these staff members are government employees their marginal tax rate is above 60% - 40% paye, 4% paye, 7% usc, pension levy 10%. So that €40k saving equates to about €16k as the other €24k would have been taken in taxes anyway.
The elephant in the room is not public sector pay - it is the welfare state. How on earth do we go from having 15% unemployment in 2013 to 5% unemployment in 2020 but still spend more on welfare than we did in 2013?
All income, earned or unearned should be subject to income tax. This needs to include long term welfare recipients.

And there are already comments that jobseekers should be increased to match the emergency covid 19 payment of 350eur

combat14

time to call this thread private sector payouts?

whole economy is completely uncompetitive on an international basis, prices of everything are way too high....

AndrewJRenko

addaword wrote: »

Reports have quite a lot of meaning when they find Irish consultants are the third highest paid in the world, and the country is adding 30 billion to our 200 billion national debt this year.

International comparisons of gross salary are meaningless, unless they tax into account taxation systems, cost of living, and, in the case of medical professionals, public/private mix, regardless of how good or bad our national debt is.

You haven't found any examples of those 'people we all know who are sitting at home on full pay doing nothing' by any chance?

addaword

AndrewJRenko wrote: »

You haven't found any examples of those 'people we all know who are sitting at home on full pay doing nothing' by any chance?

Do pay attention.

riddles wrote: »

The lack of any kind of proactive approach from the department of education in Covid has been nothing short of appalling. In fact its reactive approach has been just as bad.

One kid in national school - no contact from the school in five weeks and no access to the books.

One in secondary school getting loaded on work with no coordination among teachers of workload volume.

How hard would it have been to create remote virtual classroom offering per year in primary albeit not a two way engagement per class year for 3 hours a day and then the current teacher distributes and corrects homework

A similar model per subject and year in secondary.

The department of education and a lot of the teaching community have absolutely no interest in their roles. A function currently totally unfit for purpose and in urgent need of reform.

PS the only current measure still active in the PS is whether you swipe in every day. Most don’t even have laptops and are at home on full pay. Others are literally swamped in work which is a representation of the PS in normal operations. About 30% carrying the 70% that do SFA.

Do you think Special Needs Assistants, all 16,000 of them in the country, are working from home all day every day?

combat14 wrote: »

whole economy is completely uncompetitive on an international basis, prices of everything are way too high....

Taxes are too high, everything from income tax, vat, excise duties, vrt and so on. What does the government do with all those taxes, what do they spend them on, do you think?

Geuze

Mongfinder General wrote: »

So if these staff members are government employees their marginal tax rate is above 60% - 40% paye, 4% paye, 7% usc, pension levy 10%. So that €40k saving equates to about €16k as the other €24k would have been taken in taxes anyway.

Yes, very high MTR on PS

40% tax
4% PRSI
4.5% USC typically, 8% if over 70k

So 48.5% so far, 52% if over 70k

Then the pension conts:
6.5% (you forgot that)
10% PRD/ASC

Ok, you do get tax relief on the 16.5% pension conts.

solidasarock

I would be interested to see how they cut, if they cut. Pushing the next pay restoration into 2021 to get over the budget over the hump is a logical move. But If you are a post crash hire and are not a AO or up there isnt exactly a lot of meat on the bone.


It would be nice if the sudden shift to remote working (that seems to have gone well for most departments) shows the Gov 2 things.

1. Hey. Remote working from top to bottom works. They should keep it around.
2. If remote working is the new norm then why the F does every government department need a office for 500 people each in D1 and D2? Get some departments out of there. I am sure PLENTY of current staff would be more then willing to kiss Dublin good bye.

Mongfinder General

Geuze wrote: »

Yes, very high MTR on PS

40% tax
4% PRSI
4.5% USC typically, 8% if over 70k

So 48.5% so far, 52% if over 70k

Then the pension conts:
6.5% (you forgot that)
10% PRD/ASC

Ok, you do get tax relief on the 16.5% pension conts.

The pension contribution wasn't counted because of the intrinsic value of the pension itself - as in you should get it back when you retire. However, even that is in doubt because it will depend upon the governments ability to fund pensions, defined benefit or otherwise. Either the money is there or it isn't. And with life expectancy creeping upwards beneficiaries just won't get the benefits that have been promised.

KaneToad

Chaos Black wrote: »

*Controversial hat on*

Time that the farming industry pay their existing taxes and we stop giving them tax incentives as a disproportionate percentage of farmers are tax defaulters and we are using broad strokes here in this thread to justify sweeping actions like cutting the pay of all public servants based off of what a minority do/don't do or earn.

https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/agri-business/finance/farmers-amongst-worst-tax-defaulters-in-the-country-revenue-figures-show-36520668.html

The IFA would have no sympathy for those who deliberately try to avoid their tax," said Mr Stapleton, i is chairman of the IFA's farm business committee.

"But we would have some concern that some people, through no fault of their own, have accounts submitted that aren't accurate and because of that find themselves in a position whereby they're not paying the full amount of tax."

That's some quote!

Chiparus

combat14 wrote: »

time to call this thread private sector payouts?

whole economy is completely uncompetitive on an international basis, prices of everything are way too high....

Why are new houses €150 K in Northern Ireland?

HerrKuehn

Mongfinder General wrote: »

The pension contribution wasn't counted because of the intrinsic value of the pension itself - as in you should get it back when you retire. However, even that is in doubt because it will depend upon the governments ability to fund pensions, defined benefit or otherwise. Either the money is there or it isn't. And with life expectancy creeping upwards beneficiaries just won't get the benefits that have been promised.

The public sector will get the pensions they were promised. It is much more likely that the state pension will be means tested and this will only affect private sector workers.

costacorta

mariaalice wrote: »

Also in what way are low paid health care assistants or retail workers relevant to public service pay?

Relevant in that you are not calling for them to take a pay cut ? This public sector knocking by a few people is just a load of horse ****e as majority do an honest days work as much as a private sector worker .

HerrKuehn

costacorta wrote: »

Relevant in that you are not calling for them to take a pay cut ? This public sector knocking by a few people is just a load of horse ****e as majority do an honest days work as much as a private sector worker .

I guess they might have to take a pay cut if their employer is in trouble

Geuze

HerrKuehn wrote: »

The public sector will get the pensions they were promised. It is much more likely that the state pension will be means tested and this will only affect private sector workers.

All PS hired since April 1995 pay full-rate PRSI and should receive the State Pension.

Note that if the State Pension Contributory is abolished, as you suggest, and just the non-con SP remains, that will be a massive political change/policy/issue, and of course means a dramatic change to social insurance.

HerrKuehn

Geuze wrote: »

All PS hired since April 1995 pay full-rate PRSI and should receive the State Pension.

Note that if the State Pension Contributory is abolished, as you suggest, and just the non-con SP remains, that will be a massive political change/policy/issue, and of course means a dramatic change to social insurance.

Sure, but no private sector worker has a contract saying they will get the state pension. It would be brought in initially saying only workers with a private pension of 100k would not get it, then gradually whittled down I would guess. So, as far as I am concerned I am paying a huge amount for a pension I may not get (almost as much per year as I would be entitled to per year in a pension, not including the employers 10.75% rate on top). This compares very badly to somewhere like Germany where the state pension is linked to what you have payed in. I also put a good chunk into a private pension, should that be considered as tax?

addaword

Chiparus wrote: »

Why are new houses €150 K in Northern Ireland?

One good reason, as David McWilliams said, is because taxes are much less in Northern Ireland because they pay their public servants and welfare much less.

coolshannagh28

addaword wrote: »

One good reason, as David McWilliams said, is because taxes are much less in Northern Ireland because they pay their public servants and welfare much less.

Also because they have the economy we would have if MNC investment was stripped out and incidentally they had a MNC sector in the early 80s which failed .

addaword

coolshannagh28 wrote: »

Also because they have the economy we would have if MNC investment was stripped out and incidentally they had a MNC sector in the early 80s which failed .

Their taxes like income tax and vat and taxes on cars are the same as in the rest of the uk, a G7 country which does have multinationals. The multinationals in n Ireland failed in the 70's and 80' because the ira kidnapped and killed some industrialists, and because if a multinational was going to locate on the island the republic was more peaceful and had lower corporation tax.

David McWilliam made the point that taxes on house building and cars and income tax and vat etc can be and are all less in the north, as are public sector salaries and social welfare benefits there. Here our taxes are high to help pay for public expenditure.