Bertie gives himself 500 a week raise?

Hobbes

and backdated to Dec 2001? WTF?! and all his ministers!

Saw it on a paper in work. Can't seem to find any information online yet.

Anyone know why or how they can justify this?!

Gordon

BACKDATED! WTF!

I heard about this and thought - what a feckin hypocrite but... backdated... what a feckin thief!

PH01

I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!!

TDs GET PAID TO DO THEIR JOBS!!!???

WHAT AN INJUSTICE!? THIS MUST BE STOPPED!

LET'S TAKE TO THE STREETS AND DEMAND THAT THIS OUTRAGEOUS PRACTICE IS HALTED!

WHO'S WITH ME?

Hobbes

yea if I actually thought they were doing thier job.

From speaking with a friend who works in FAS he said the current figures for unemployment are about 400 people a week laid off (seems very high even for me?!). Would like to see a more official statement on that.

Add to that the government has just planned to cut the health board by 1,600 jobs (wanted employees, not actual jobs AFAIK) to save money and to further cut the civil service by 5,000 across the board. Maybe that's why they can pay themselves a bonus?

TD's are hardly poor, yet there are people who wouldn't earn close to 500 in a month, let alone a week.

Dr_Teeth

That sucks, 26k extra per year each? That's a decent nurse/teacher/etc salary right there, and those people are actually helpful.

Teeth.

gandalf

Well considering people are losing their jobs, having to accept wages cutbacks (I know I did!) to keep their jobs I think this is a bloody disgrace.

If they were actually doing a good job I wouldn't be so annoyed but the fact they couldn't run a corner shop (no offense to shop keepers) let alone a country really galls me !

What next Bertie appearing on National TV telling us we have to "tighten" our belts or will he let Tellytubby Harney deliver that bit of bad PR for him.

Gandalf.

Xterminator

Just a point.

If we pay our leaders and politicians crap money, then the best and brightest will go to private industry, and we will be left with

a) Crooks, (who supplement with brown bags etc)
b) Fanatics (Who have their own private agenda, e.g youth defense etc.)
c) People who couldnt cut it in the real world

So, I personally dont mind if TD's are given a decent wage, etc. Over the long term it may attract a better kind of person to the post, and that can only be good for the country.

There an element of you get what you pay for, and when the government is negotiating treatys, and running the budget of the country, it does effect every one of us. i dont want a 'yellow pack government' of failed businessmen, crooks and fanatics.

(Dunno who to vote for so )

X

Hobbes

What country are you in again?

It's one thing paying them well, for example this is there second pay raise recently afaik?

But when the econmy is so bad, people are getting shoved on the dole queue by the bucket load and people who have been waiting years for promised pay raises (ie. Teachers), you have to wonder how they can justify it?

miju

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again after that

Fianna Failure are the biggest pack of **** in the world EVER and they should all be lined up and shot they have ruined this country and I personally blame them for me now having to strongly consider leaving this country due to spiralling house costs and living costs on my ****ty wages while those pricks give them selves a ****ing rise.

I mean jesus ****ing christ I'd love to be on 500 a week full stop let alone give myslef a rise by that amount

a bientot

In view of the recent difficulties Bertie has had in communicating with the cats on the Isle of Man, M. Blair and the Texas Cowboy in Belfast there has to be some truth in the rumour that our esteemed leader is to attend basic English language classes organised for asylum seekers, refugees and other 'internationals' to take place at the same time as classes are provided in Gaeilge and Francais for other Teachtai Dala in Kildare street.............

Teachers have been asked to concentrate on basic verbs past , present and future tenses and also basic vocabulary.
Homework will be obligatory but if writing is a little jerky apologies will be accepted particularly if done between Baldonnel and Collinstown aboard the flying palace....

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Victor

Originally posted by Xterminator
If we pay our leaders and politicians crap money, then the best and brightest will go to private industry, and we will be left with

a) Crooks, (who supplement with brown bags etc)
b) Fanatics (Who have their own private agenda, e.g youth defense etc.)
c) People who couldnt cut it in the real world

Hang on, they are being paid well, but we still have the crooks, fanatics and losers.

You forgot about the most important category, people who care about society, their communities and country.

bumbum

Yeah he's a gem alright.
I like the way the country is getting less competitive, people are working harder to earn less cash and inflation is going up like a rocket.
You only have to wait 5 years to be eligible for the back to work scheme on social welfare now. A great idea considering that it's only an increase of 4 years.
Who needs inward investment in this country - everything is rosy! That's why we're all so happy with our current leaders.
On top of giving them a pay rise equivalent to a good industrial wage, I think we should all donate all that spare change that we throw away for fun to a Berty Fund.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit! Since the current bunch of pricks got into power, I've sunk to new depths. I'd leave this country in the blink of an eye - if I could afford the flight!

Xterminator – Hobbes says, “what country are you living in?” I say what stratosphere and timeline are you existing in! Are you really that naive or are you the King of sarcasm? We DO pay our leaders good money and they ARE crooks and fanatics. They’re running the country into the ground and lining their pockets with YOUR money while they’re at it.
Wake up sleepy, ‘cause if you don’t wake up soon they’ll pinch the very bed you’re sleepin in!

PHB

The people generally who went through college and went into politics would be law/history/politics/economics type people.

The amount of money they can make in the public sector is nothing compared to the amount they could make in the private sector. The best must be encouraged to run for office and the best way to do that is to make the pay close to the private sector.

The problem is that some politician has to do it himself taking a political risk.
While bertie might be doing it for his own selfinterests it has some good sides.

Sparks

PHB,

The people generally who went through college and went into politics would be law/history/politics/economics type people. The amount of money they can make in the public sector is nothing compared to the amount they could make in the private sector. The best must be encouraged to run for office and the best way to do that is to make the pay close to the private sector.

Bollocks. Lawyers make a lot, 'tis true, but only because they're overpaid. Historians make fcuk all (hell, my mother has a degree in history and gets stuck teaching part-time in secondary schools). Politics types? What else would they work at? And I've yet to find what an economist is good for, since no politicians seem to take their advice in this country at any rate.

The problem is that some politician has to do it himself taking a political risk.

Crap. Crap, crap and double crap. You know what's needed for politicians? Qualifications. A lower standard of required qualifications than we have is hard to imagine without looking at the nastier dictatorships in Africa and Asia. Hell, Bertie himself faked degrees from UCD and the LSE up till this year, and still hasn't made a formal statement on the matter. You arrange it so that a Minister for Finance has to have at least a degree in economics and I'll back that. At least a degree in law for the Minister for Justice. A H.Dip. for the minister of Education. And maybe getting an MD is too much for the Minister for Health, but at least some degree or formal training in some form of administration should be required.
Hell, I'd even settle for some form of personal sanction for politicians caught breaking the law!

While bertie might be doing it for his own selfinterests it has some good sides.

You pay for it then, I want no part in it! Take that money and pay for useful people - teachers, nurses, doctors, engineers, emergency services, people that actually produce something!

Victor

Originally posted by PHB
The people generally who went through college and went into politics would be law/history/politics/economics type people.

Actually, I would say most TDs and Senators do not have a formal qualification relevant to their job. Statisticly many are either teachers or wheeler-dealers by profession.

daveirl

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Hobbes

Originally posted by daveirl
Does anyone actually read what's posted here? I just explained how doubling the spending in the health service didn't improve things so why do people think throwing money at it now will work.

So it should be thrown into their wage packet instead? I think not. Anyone got a link to the latest on Berties taxi bills as well that he's claiming?

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Sparks

daveirl,
I'll happily agree that the health service needs reform - but one of the first reforms is to increase wages for the sods doing the grunt work - nurses and junior doctors. The spending in the Health department, recall, is not all wages and medical supplies, but admin overheads and building projects too. Cutting back on wages for the people doing a job that you need them to do for the sake of your health is rather short-sighted.

Increasing teacher's wages is also deperately needed. Teachers are the long-term investment that noone in this country seems to want to make, and because of their low salaries in comparison to lawyers and stockbrokers and so on, the top people take one look at the amount of work needed to teach and the pay you get in return and run as fast as they can in the opposite direction. The end result is that the kids are educated by people other than the best and the brightest (with a few dedicated exceptions who took the job from a vocation rather than a career choice), and then that generation goes on to give a slightly worse education to the next generation, and on, and on... a vicious circle which is facilitated by the reduction of difficulty in examinations. End result? There are now remedial english and remedial mathematics courses given to first year UL engineering students because of the poor overall standard in new undergrads there. TCD has the same problem (but isn't facing up to it). Frankly, it's the most worrying thing in this country for me, in a long-term sense.

As to raising wages for emergency services - well, anyone that thinks our ambulance service is fine has never heard of paramedics.

So do I think we should throw money at civil service beaurocracy? No. At the wage packets of the people doing the work? Damn straight. At Bertie's back pocket? Stop trying to give me a damn stroke!

daveirl

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bonkey

Originally posted by daveirl
They don't know the meaning of stress.

Except when you've a teacher who actually cares about the students they are trying to teach and they have students who arent the sharpest in the bunch or are lacking in motivation, causing trouble, etc. etc. etc.

I've an aunt who has worked as a maths teacher for a problem school in a deprived area for the past 15-ish years (I think...maybe longer). Having talked to her about her teaching, I can honestly say that she knows more about stress than I do...and I've been yay close to a physical breakdown from stress and overwork in my job on at least one occasion.

We're gettng slightly off topic here. The issue is not necessarily about who should get the money, but rather that it is very difficult to justify the ease with which TDs can get themselves payraises while telling the rest of the nation that its belt-tightening time.

jc
jc

Sparks

daveirl,
My mother is a teacher in the secondary school system. And from her direct experience having worked in the worst and some of the best schools in the greater dublin area, I'm afraid you're incorrect, by quite an amount. Teachers do get fired, you only hear of permanent teachers having long-term jobs and those are damn hard to get right now, they work short hours of actual face-to-face teaching but they then have huge amounts of time outside actual classes taken up by grading, setting exercises and exams, perparing lesson plans and so on and so forth. Frankly, most teachers work similar or worse hours than engineers, at least amongst those whom I know. While I wouldn't remotely count that as scientific evidence, I'll happily stand by the workload comparison between a good (ie, dedicated) teacher and a good (same definition) engineer any day of the week. And anyone that thinks teaching a class of 14-year-olds on any subject is a stress-free experience probably has the last name Ghandi or is a tibetan monk, especially when in one school, students have to be chastised for bringing in knives to class, and in another school, you have to justify lesson plans to a 14-year-old because the school doesn't want to upset her grandfather (an ex-taoiseach).

Give me engineering any damn day of the week please. I can happily work 48-hour days if the alternative is standing up in front of a class of 14-year-olds.

Typedef

Originally posted by PH01
I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!!

TDs GET PAID TO DO THEIR JOBS!!!???

WHAT AN INJUSTICE!? THIS MUST BE STOPPED!

LET'S TAKE TO THE STREETS AND DEMAND THAT THIS OUTRAGEOUS PRACTICE IS HALTED!

WHO'S WITH ME?

What sort of job are you doing that you get backdated pay increases?

Only in the publc service, can this sort of inept waste of resource be 'justified'.... in fact... maybe I should be looking for my next job as a civil service techie....

backdated pay increases...... benchmarking.... who am I to turn down free easy money?

daveirl

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PHB

While it might be true that Bertie and his cabinate dont deserve the wages,
I would wonder if everyone agrees that public jobs aren't as well paid as they should be.
I know that in the english system most people going in politics do a Philospohy, Politics and Economics degree so thats what I was basing my ideas on, sorry

You'd be suprised about how much money you can make through a combination of politics/economics/history, if you get very high scores in it. America particuarly is very good for people with politics degress.

Personally the people I'd want managing the economy is the person who came top of his class in the London school of economics, but the simple fact is that they won't go for the jobs because they can make a hellof a lot of more money elsewhere.

You gotta get the best people into the job and while you might claim that being the best also involves wanting to help other people, and that if you choose money over your country that you're not the best person for the job. But people always put number ones interest first, and if you can intice the best of the best to become TD's then the country would be run a hellof a lot better than it is at the moment.

Sparks

daveirl,

/me isn't bitter about the ASTI's attempt to screw up his Leaving Cert.

You can't reasonably expect that claim to hold up, can you? The ASTI action was not taken lightly, it was not aimed at students and at least half the responsibility for the disruption to the exams and the Leaving Cert program lies squarely with the mandarins in the Department of Education. What were teachers supposed to do? Accept whatever the government handed out? Simple truth is that their actions simply didn't go far enough. The problem with the Department of Education needs to be solved, the faster the better because the one and only resource this country has is a pool of well-educated graduates and right now we not only don't have that resource anymore (that's from someone seeing the current crop of TCD graduates up close and personal) but we're not doing anything to fix the problem. And that will in the medium-to-long-term, screw everyone over.

What other profession gets holidays that even approach the amount teachers get?

These would be the holidays where many teachers grade leaving and junior cert exams? Or prepare for the next term or year? And remember - only permanent teachers get paid for summer vacation...

Maybe on a busy week during the school year they might have the same amount of work but otherwise no.

Thing is, there are maybe one or two weeks in the academic year that don't qualify as busy.

I'm only 2 years out of school and can tell you that the teachers in my school had at most 20 classes a week.

20 hours of classes a week, plus lesson prep time, grading time, setting of exercises and exams, supervision...
The point is, students see the end product of the teacher's time, and for every hour you see them, all but the oldest, most experienced spend a minimum of another hour preparing, and a norm of two or three. Remember, one student does a small amount of homework - one teacher gets to correct usually three to five classes worth each night - that comes to about 90 to 150 pieces of work, each night. I didn't think much of many of my teachers either - but the ones that put the work in, those you tend to remember for a very long time, and frankly I don't mind in the least them getting paid well.

On the backdated issue, wasn't it the teachers who wanted the supervision pay backdated to allow teachers who'd retired to get the increase too.

So they wanted people who'd done the work to get paid for having done it? Seems fair to me mate - or would you prefer to work unpaid overtime with a low base salary yourself?

PHB,

Personally the people I'd want managing the economy is the person who came top of his class in the London school of economics, but the simple fact is that they won't go for the jobs because they can make a hellof a lot of more money elsewhere.

I wouldn't mind paying a lot of money to the person in charge - but only if that person is paid for doing the job right. Dammit, I don't know of any job where you can get the job without qualifications, make a hames of it and then not get fired. I certainly don't know of one where you can lie about the way things are going to your overall boss and get away with it. So if you want to pay private sector pay rates for a public sector posting, go ahead - but you have to have private sector job security and qualifications as well. I mean, who the hell else gets a job with a faked CV, gets paid large amounts of money including backdated pay raises and doesn't have to give truthful reports to his boss?

if you can intice the best of the best to become TD's then the country would be run a hellof a lot better than it is at the moment.

Again, I agree with you, but if and only if you can have some form of personal sanction against TDs for cases where they either screw up royally or deliberatly flout the law.

daveirl

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PHB

The point is that when they **** up people aren't meant to vote them into office, unfortunatly this isnt the case, but I think with the generation of FF and FG voters dying off I think it'll soon be a new government.

bumbum

Jeeze,
I think that we're gettin a little bit off the point here. Teacher's pay is a big subject and rightly deserves a lot of discussion in order to reach some kind of resolution but I believe we were originally discussing Bertie's pay rise here.
By keeping heated subjects like this in the news, Bertie and co. are keeping the pressure off themselves. We do spend an awful lot on a sub-standard health service and those of you who think that cutting investment in it can possibly lead to an improvement are kidding yourselves.
The one thing that we really need to improve public services in general is accountability. If we could keep track of who is investing what amount of money in varous projects in the public service - be it education, health, infrastructure or whatever - and the performance of these investments, then there would be no hiding place for the inadequate and corrupt. Our taxes would go further, our public services would be better and we would have a few more euro's in our pockets.
This kind of clarity is, at best, a long way off. It would be niaive wishful thinking of me to expect any improvement in this area any time soon.
Power will always be abused. It's human nature and our instinctive greed that motivates us to go that extra yard sets us apart from the rest of the animals. The people in power are now trying to take away from us, one of our most prized rights - freedom of information. They want to restrict the amount of information about OUR tax money and the decisions that our leaders are making in OUR name, and increase the amount of time before this restricted information reaches us.
Let's put into context, some of the more notable actions of this current bunch of wan*ers:
They've received billions from the EU to improve our infrastructure and we've only seen a fraction of the improvement that was possible. (this is common knowledge in Europe and is making it increasingly difficult to to get more grants)
Our economy was one of the fastest growing economies in the world for a sustained period yet our standard of living has not kept pace - infact, homelessness is up and health and education systems are in crises.
We were involved in a war which, regardless of individual opinion, was clearly against the wishes of the majority of the electorate.
Just two months after the last elections, our leaders openly admitted to us that they had lied about the state of the country's finances in order to retain office - and there's nothing we can do about it until the next elections by which time they hope to have restricted the freedom of information bill to suit themselves.
As the world's economies slowed down with war and uncertianty in the middle-east, countries around the globe tightened their belts - what did we do? Bertie's new Jet springs to mind. A fleet of new luxury cars replacing cars with an averave of less than 10000 miles each for his buddies. A back-dated pay rise. Funny ways of preparing your country for tough times.
I want to know what our leaders are getting up to, after all, I pay their wages and so do you, so you should demand to know what returns you're getting on your investements. Until we know where our taxes are going, who's responsible for these investements, and how well they're performing, we will all continue to argue about whether teachers are worth their saleries and hiring the wages for nurses but this doesn't tackle the core problem of curruption at the very top.
Until the Irish develop a more peripheral vision and see the broader picture we're destined to be ripped off by these arrogant thieves. I don't care about their personal lives, qualifications or legal past (within reason). If someone gets into a position of power and clearly performes well, I'll be happy. But as I see it now, we are paying people to do a job and they're not performing. We don't know what they're getting up to and their bank balance says one thing but their standard of living says something completely different.
We need to continue to invest heavily in education, health services and our infrastructure but in order to make it worth our while, the procedures in which these investements are made have to change drastically and people held accountable for their actions. This means both punishment AND rewarding people in charge. Our legal system has to be set out with rigid minimum guidlines for both fraud and obstruction infringements.
These are hugh changes and I doubt if I'll see many of these in my lifetime but hopefully, someone will prove me wrong.

Sparks

bumbum,
Agreed. Dave, I'll happily continue on the teachers topic with you, but I think we ought to start another thread to do so.

I don't think that accountability is going to do much good on it's own though - there have to be sanctions for those that muck things up as well.

They're not trying to take away freedom of information - the amendment is already law, it was signed sometime last week, if my memory is working right.

Frankly the only hope I think we have is to refuse to elect people unless and until we get certain rights - the right for the public to force a referendum in the same way that swiss people can would be the minimum - from that, everything else can be accomplished.
Restoring and empowering local government past the castrated version we have now would be a good next item on the list. Repealing the amendment to the FOI act would be an excellent requirement as well.

What are the odds we'll see this? Pah! Slim and none
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