Gardai now best paid workers in the state - CSO

Yes because private sector salaries are very much a moveable feast. When my dad was my age he had 2 secretaries and 2 assistants. And he got his mortgage from his employer. I pointed out to him that if he was doing the same job today he would get a laptop and a blackberry and that would be it.

I knew a Garda who joined when he was twenty and worked double shifts every day and as fast as he could so that he could retire at 35. He has 2 homes in Portugal and plays golf 3 times a day. Lucky git.

I think the quality of Gardai will diminish over time and we’ll be left with some right new ejits like they’ve had in the UK for decades now and indeed the US.

We can’t hide the fact that what’s happening in these countries will happen here unless we pay Gardai good money- now in return we’d expect high standards of course - but we won’t have a quality force if we continue down the road we’re going

Besides, anyone I've heard of leaving the guards it's been because of the culture.

I get the impression it's riddled with internal politics and bad eggs.

Probably all fighting over the cushiest jobs and overtime. Maybe some of them are too well paid?

Didn't they treat that poor whistleblower awfully a few years back.

Zing

Gardai highest paid in the state?

Teacher: "Hold my beer"

He knows that, it was a joke to highlight how little bearing the anecdotes about gards the other poster knew had on the debate.

Shur I knew a gard that worked quadruple shifts that joined when he was 24 and managed to retire to the algarve 2 years before he joined at 22 with 4 rental properties a trophy wife and a serious amount of STIs and then he moonlighted as an ex-pat crimelord dentist wha!....as if it has a solitary **** worth of bearing on the argument what gards he knew.

It's the same old childish immature begrudging shite they come up with every time and if they had to do the job you know well their tune would change faster than a weather forecast and they'd be whinging about the pay and conditions.

I honestly think people think that Gardai just get handed free money under the headings "overtime" and "unsocial hours allowances"

I'm not talking about overtime. I'm talking about allowances that the majority of guards get (nights, weekends, 15 mins parade time, public holidays etc). This adds 25-30% to basic.

The basis of my argument is not that it's great to be a guard - it is that the job is not underpaid.

Overtime is optional. But I would speculate that many guards, when younger, get a taste for it and find it hard to give it up. Lifestyle tends to rise to meet income.

No they're not.

I don't agree that the majority of jobs in the world get overtime. Possibly the majority of jobs in Ireland do. Most salaried private sector jobs don't.

In my experience of working in IT I've only ever known one company to pay overtime. The standard is you get promised time-in-lieu, which regularly you won't be able to take. I wouldn't know exactly how frequently it happens but it's not unusual for people to have spells of working 50-60 hours and get nothing back for it.

If you are working nights or weekend you get additional pay. Same in IT.

People working 50-60 hours and not on a salary which would warrant that much work need to look at their career choices. If you are given time-in-lieu and don't take it then again that is bad management by the employee.

Tell someone to work 50-60 hours and then hand them 40k salary and see what they say. Especially in IT. IT consultants would regular do longer hours due to the job's they have but what is their wages?

I have worked in IT. I know exactly what you can and can't get. I also worked outside normal hours and got the rewards. I used to do a lot of nights shift/weekends when young to pump up the wages.

You gave an example, I think the best reference and well known is a Accenture consultant, massive wages but worked long hours. 50-60. They will do that for a few years and then jump before burn out with a nice package. But the junior Accenture staff will be working the standard 40 hours a week.

I provided the basic Garda wages. I never said they need a pay raise. I just pointed to the fact what they earn as a basic

The "toxic culture" is a few bad and majority are good. Don't try tarnish an entire organisation because of the few.

The IT average wage in Ireland is 60-70k. Majority won't work longer hours and most will work a standard 9-5 job. Some won't of course like network admin/server admins as they will have weekend work.

https://itshifting.com/ireland/salaries#:~:text=The%20average%20IT%20salary%20in,remuneration%20is%20offered%20in%20Dublin.

...once again, try it! teaching is no joke, severally under resourced schools, classes with many students with particular needs, and not enough resources to provide those needs, complete nut job parents, threatening everyone and anyone, yea, tis some laugh, teaching!

Whenever im in my GFs parents house, which is a lot these days, since we both moved to our parents houses, I see her mother who is a teacher working. Like all the time, even at 10pm.

I asked her one day why she is still working and she said her job doesnt end when she leaves the office.

Now thats fair enough to me, but if you want to divide their salary by the number of office hours then it should be spelled out that teachers are not to work out of office hours, if you want that figure to be correct. Id say the same of any job.

I dont get overtime in my job, but i stopped working after my contract hours were up when i realized i was being made a mug of in a performance review last year when they told me my current salary was benchmarked with the industry and was above average for my job, so there would be no raise (they said that to everyone). At that time i was doing 50 to 60 hours per week for the company. Im doing 37.5 now for the same salary. Even if thy raised my salary by 10% now it I wouldnt get the value out of my extra time, so they can shove it. Their move.

I dont think they can do zero hours.

Its not for me to comment on how hard or valuable anyone elses job might be, but i think when a survey is dividing the annual salary by the number of office hours only (for any job), this is bad research and should be thrown in the bin, instead of appearing in a newspaper for dramatic effect.

Let me make this a bit easier to understand.

Lets say I work in IT - which I do.

My company dont pay us overtime.

What is my hourly rate if my salary is €50,000 and I work 200 days a year from 9 to 5pm with an hour for lunch?

Now what is my hourly rate if I work for 200 days a year from 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch and I work an extra 1 hour per day without pay?

That is the danger of trying to pretend its the same value to the worker when you only count office hours.

Its the same kind of divisive attitude as saying that a Gardas salary is great because he gets more money for doing a week and a halfs work in one week and god forbid, gets paid properly for it.