Budget & SSIA acc's

Waylander

Does anyone know what date the budget is on ? BTW anyone with an SSIA acc who wants to adjust their monthly contribution should do so prior to the budget as Mc Creevy is expected to freeze the contribution to current amounts in the budget.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Its the 1st Wednesday in December...
This year being the 4th


BTW the Dept. Finance website is well up to date...
http://www.finance.gov.ie/budget/budgetindex.htm
[Remeber its Budget 2003 forthcoming!!]

Victor

Originally posted by 80project
BTW the Dept. Finance website is well up to date...
http://www.finance.gov.ie/budget/budgetindex.htm
[Remeber its Budget 2003 forthcoming!!]

Sorted. Mailed this to them "Can you lazy civil servants please put something on the website for Budget 2003. PS I will be checking in on you." I was going to use harsher language, but ..... lets see where I get with plain rudeness.

Waylander

That is great, cheers.

Victor

There is at least one un-lazy civil servant. The response

Dear Mr XXXXXX,

Thank you for your e-mail. We have not yet created a section for Budget 2003 on our website, as there will be no documents/releases until nearer Budget Day, which is 4th December, 2002.

We aim to have the full Budget Documentation available on the website that day when the Minister has concluded his speech in Dáil Eireann.

Jill XXXX Webmaster

My response

Thank you for your prompt reply. Does this mean you won't even be issuing a press release to say when budget day is?

I have too much time on my hands.

Victor

Her response:

This year's date was announced by the Minister in the Dáil on 25th June 2002. We didn't issue a press release at the time, word usually spreads quite quickly.

Last year we issued a press release because it was the first time the calendar year was aligned fully with the tax year, which resulted in a number of complicating once-off factors in relation to the implementation of Budget 2002. There was also a lot of speculation last year that the Budget would be brought forward by a couple of months.

We will be putting our Budget 2003 page up on the website soon and will indicate the date of the forthcoming Budget.

Regards,

Jill

Waylander

You are right Victor, you do have too much time on your hands. Thanks for the help though.

sceptre

Hmmm, another government department who want to make me install Excel on my Red Hat installation (see the obvious problem)

Sent them this:

Documents on dept of finance webpage

Have you guys heard of Portable Document Format (PDF)?

The reason I ask is because all your documents available for download are in proprietary microsoft formats (.doc and .xls). PDF is a well-known, commonly used non-proprietary document format. It's used by all sensible information distributors who don't ignore the points below.

Without ranting, here are a few points:

* Not everyone has either Word or Excel
* Not everyone who has either or both Word or Excel is willing to risk downloading a potentially virus-laden file to read a few DoF projections
* The current government's commitment to an information society (as outlined in the overly long Connections document - handily downloadable as a .PDF) is sorely lacking if you require all of us to buy MS Office to read published documents when there is a variety of free readers for all computing platforms available for the non-proprietary PDF format
* Other departments are making the effort. Even your mailservers are using GNU software. Why do you feel the need to use MS documents only which can be read only by users using Windows/Mac OS who happen to have a copy of Word/Excel lying around?
* (and this one may grab your attention) I can read the comments in your Microsoft documents by revealing the codes - in other words I can read what you don't want people to be able to see. You at least might want to go through all your Word and Excel documents and remove the comments before everyone else gets around to reading them.

The cynics will say that I too have too much time on my hands.

Victor

Oh, I did apologize to Jill and gave her the link to this thread .....

Originally posted by sceptre
The cynics will say that I too have too much time on my hands.

Are you going OT? Personally I prefer files to be in HTML cos it is very difficult to search PDF files.

80p, soz for the spam. :meek:

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Were answering the threads questions as we proceed...
Just a little padding, plus I agree w/ Sceptre's points.

Proceed.

sceptre

Originally posted by Victor
Are you going OT?

Just a little (apologies - Waylander's Q seemed to have been answered, he just mentioned the possibility of SSAI contribution freezing by the by)

Personally I prefer files to be in HTML cos it is very difficult to search PDF files.

I wouldn't say it's that difficult to search PDF files but you're right - regular HTML is even more accessible than using PDF (as people won't have to download a reader). However, unless they just go the easy route of just saving as html in Word/Excel (producing a nice big file with plenty of potential problems for people not using Internet Explorer (see "other computing platforms" reference), I wouldn't expect the civil service to employ an army of markup coders merely to make their documents more accessible when just buying one copy of Acrobat would do the trick. Even the ODTR have finally grasped this idea.



Back on topic:D, I suppose it's certainly a possibility that Mr McCreevy will freeze contributions. People making small contributions won't be able to increase them while people who wish to decrease their contributions may just drop out. Both would suit him and I can see him trying (what I'd class as) an underhand tactic like this. I suppose the simple solution is for people to switch to a comfortable/desired contribution before the budget. I won't be increasing my contributions while in student land for the next few years (currently I'm paying just €25) - after next May I don't get the option in any case[1] but can see it might cause problems for quite a few people.

Personally I think he'd be guilty of a breach of trust (at least in the moral sense) if he took these steps but I suppose it never stopped a politician (or army of civil servants) taking similar steps before[2]



[1]Off-topic again but are there many SSIAs offered by banks where people can change contributions as much as they wish? My TSB one (opened on the last day) gives me the optin to change after 12 months and never again after.
[2]Now if I was a real cynic, i'd bring up 1977 but given that I was 2 at the time (and that I'm not a true cynic) I'm neither qualified or in the mood to do so:)

Waylander

Thanks for all your very thorough replies folks. Sceptre in answer to your question, yes there were accounts where you could change the amunt as often as you wished. I unfortunately tied myself into one where you could change as often as you liked after year one. The year is up on December 7th. That, to my mind means he is garunteed to freeze the contribution with immediate effect in this budget.

The reason he is doing it is because tax revenue this year is way down on where hew expected it to be, and he is now running scared on this whole SSIA thing.

hamster

If Charlie does freeze the SSIA contributions... this will help people to refresh their memories on the phrase: "This is no Eircom, this is a guarenteed winner". How can the Government maintain any trust for future investments? I guess they can't do much more than freeze the contributions because many people invested in equities as well as deposits. With equities down by 30-40% at the moment they would take too kindly to cuts. If the government can't plan for 5 years, how can they expect the public to do so? After all equities are a long term investment. A tricky time to be in Charlies shoes.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

hamster

True... except you'd expect market forces to be responsible for that and not the Government who promoted it in the first place. The sooner we hear about the budget the better lest rumours start to influence the government too.

Waylander

Eh Hamster, market forces are nothing to do with it. The government will still be putting €1 for every €4 saved into your account. If you chose to gamle that on an equity type account that was your own choice.

hamster

Many people went into the Equity option understanding that it is for the medium to long term. Myself, I believe the fall in the markets is the best thing that could happen in the short tem, as it i) makes unit funds much cheaper and ii) is near the start of the 5 year. This makes room for growth over the long run. This also fits in the with penalty of withdrawing in the 1st five years. But of course, Governments think in election terms...