Ireland's national debt 'one of the highest in the world' on a per capita basis

Because this is a socialist country that spends far too much on two types of social welfare. The first don't work, so we give them houses and thir kids iphones and xbox's that those who do work could only dream of, and the second type which are the public sector workers, who are some of the most highly paid of their type in the world. So much so that when Ireland was looking for bailouts because of the banking crisis, the lenders asked why do you pay them so much?

"But if the UK public sector is full of "fat cats", the Irish public sector is full of "morbidly obese cats".

Tomorrow the Irish public face the most austere budget in the nation's history and public sector pay and pensions is at last on the agenda. But it is highly unlikely there will be any cuts that see top earners taking home less than the prime minister.

So back to Fingleton's pay of £255,000. It's not like for like, but the following will give you a flavour of the runaway public sector pay in Ireland.

Runaway pay won't be really tackled in Ireland

The highest paid public sector boss in Ireland takes home a staggering €752,568 (£637,000) – that is Electricity Supply Board chief, Padraig McManus. The average salary at the ESB is €70,000 - making them the highest paid electricity workers in the world.

The second highest paid public sector boss is Declan Collier, the head of the Dublin Airport Authority who is on a package worth €568,100 while the head of An Post is on €500,000 and the head of the forestry commission, Coillte is on a tidy €417,000.

In fact, so much financial cholesterol is coursing through the veins of the Irish public and semi-state sector, a report earlier this summer found that 66 public servants in Ireland receive more than €500,000 each including 37 judges, the head of the controversial National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, and the head of the National Treasury Management Agency, which looks after the country's public finances."

"BAILOUT officials will find some public servants earn over 40pc more than eurozone colleagues as they assess whether new pay cuts are justified.

Senior sources have revealed that IMF and EU officials are carrying out a benchmarking exercise using data from international bodies, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)." https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/warning-over-imf-exercise-to-benchmark-pay-with-eu-26723325.html

"As part of this process, high-level European and IMF bureaucrats have compiled a list of top-level public sector pay and are believed to be deeply unimpressed by the huge disparities between the packages secured by European public sector mandarins and their Irish counterparts.

A series of recent surveys by government bodies such as Forfas has revealed that Ireland's doctors, nurses, police and teachers are among the highest-paid public servants in the world.

Top Irish professionals such as university lecturers, judges and hospital consultants earn twice as much as their European counterparts and Ireland also has the highest-paid electricity workers in the world.

Top European bankers such as Jean-Claude Trichet have pointed out these disparities to Irish ministers complaining about the high interest rate on the IMF/EU/ECB bailout.

The figures, which have been compiled by the EU and the IMF, also reveal that over recent years, the rate of increases in Irish public sector wages has been 100 per cent higher than that experienced by other EU countries." https://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/john-drennan/john-drennan-imf-slams-outrageous-public-pay-rates-26717222.html

And of course what does the Irish government do when there is €150,000 debt per income tax payer? Why it awards the public sector pay rises. You couldn't make it up.

There's government ads on the radio telling you that eating too much makes you fat, that a car should be serviced, etc etc etc, common sense but costing tens of millions a year, we simply can't afford these pet projects to blow our money with. You get whingers wanting schools to be ripped apart to instal about 5 different designations of toilet based on what people want to relate to depending on what is in fashion this month, again would cost tens of millions.

Then you get children with Scoliosis awaiting tiny sums of money to fund operations that will ensure they are not a burden on the tax payer for life and funding isn't there.

Just double the 'capita' and half the 'per capita' debt.

"How is that achieved?"

Sex and inward migration.

...bring it on, debt is the money supply, no debt = no money supply! we need to embrace public debt, as we have become over reliant on the private sector money supply, the credit supply, which is primarily used for speculation in asset markets, driving their prices even higher, property being a perfect example. but increasing the public money supply going forward must be used for productive means, and not used to further increase asset prices such as property.....

....oh and we need to largely ignore the neoclassicals that always panic over the public money supply, siting the end of the world with its use and increases, as theyll just keep leading us into credit fueled asset booms and busts!

Rather than now reigning in the budget deficits now that covid is over and inflation is rising, the government has extended out substantial budget deficits of 5 billion euros a year out to 2026.

All those promises to the green party of cutting carbon and retrofitting are massively expensive and unaffordable. Putin's adventurism in the Ukraine could derail most of that anyway if interest rates and energy prices are forced ever higher.

...you do realise, a significant proportion of greek, and even irish debt is whats called 'odious', it was in fact effectively forced upon us, in order to protect plutocratic interests, primarily within the financial sectors! greece is stuck in a perpetual 'extend and pretend' situation, in which it has no means to truly pay back these debts, during 2015, it was in fact realised creditors didnt actually want their money back, that the situation was orchestrated so that other states, primarily the piigs, would not stand up in conjunction with the greeks, and force the creditors to rethink, it worked! yes, greece is indeed in a far worse situation now, extremely high unemployment amongst its youth, extremely high and unpayable debts, with no true means to pay them back, ever, and declining gdp!

italy, italy has never been able to cope with the implementation of the euro, the fact that a monetary system was implemented without any true surplus recycling mechanism in place, a central banking system that doesnt represent the interests of its citizens, and has more or less aligned itself with the same plutocratic interests mentioned above. italy has a traditional manufacturing economy, since the implementation of the euro, it has been unable to compete against the mite of other euro countries, primarily germany, in which the euro is truly just a rebranded Deutsche Mark, and since it gave up the powers of its central bank upon entering the euro, it has had no tools in order to counteract this, i.e. devaluing etc. all of this in turn has forced italy to take on even more public debt, in order to survive.....

once again, this is what happens when you become over reliant on the private sector money supply......

We need more people to reduce the 'per capita debt'. How about importing some Ukrainians? It would certainly be better than paying them thousands to produce Patricks and Patricias.

...its common for public debts to be continuously rolled over by using long term perpetual bonds, rolling over private debt is far more difficult, as we experienced in 08, our rate of growth of private debt was unsustainable, confidence was lost, and the whole thing fell over. we re currently in another potential private debt bust, with looming rate hikes, baring in mind private debts are now higher than at the height of the previous global credit bubble, the fear is, when rates are hiked, these private debts become unmanageable, and kaboom! theres actually nothing stopping central banks from buying up government and other bonds, in order to maintain some sort of stability, and i suspect thats whats gonna happen, in order to keep the show on the road, but everyone is in a big waiting game now.....

IMHO I think if Central Banks rise interest rates to the point countries get into trouble the only solution would be debt forgiveness en masse. Its the only logical way out. I never saw a finance minster so relaxed as Pascal after spending 30 odd billion of debt ! having said that all western finance ministers seemed to be of the same school.   

again, debt is the money supply, we ve always run our economies on such systems, this has been occurring for millennia now, being indebted isnt necessarily a bad thing, provided there are agreements between creditors and debtors, but its critical that these debts are used for productive means, in which we have not being doing very well. a large proportion of debts, in both the public and private domains has been used for speculation, in particular in property markets, simply inflating prices, and since credit primarily comes from the private domain, its hardwired to maximise returns, at all costs, which tends to lead into high risk activities, derivatives trading etc etc, these type of activities only truly benefits creditors, and screws everybody else, particularly in crashes. again, we now have enough proof, an over reliance on the credit supply is in fact highly dangerous for everyone, including creditors...

We could give preference to Ukrainian oligarchs and anyway 'net drains' often become 'net gains'. Statistics aren't always 'eye opening' sometimes, as with this thread, they're simply misleading.