If the burden of cuts was shared more boradly, would you be more willing to accept some cuts? The reason I ask this is that there is an elephant in the room but nobody is talking about it. We're in this mess because of a speculative bubble in the residential property market. Much of that was fueled by a rush of buy to let investors. Many of these buy to let investors are still now receiving a direct subsidy from the state in the form of rent allowances from the Department of Social Welfare and the HSE, and tax reliefs from the Revenue Commissioners. These subsidies are placing an artificial floor on rents for all tennants in an oversupplied market, rents are not falling in the manner that they should. If tackling this issue were to become a corner stone of any new agreement, along with a US style tax system*, would it make you more ameniable to a deal?

* All Irish Citizens to be liable for Irish Income Tax on their world wide income with discounts equivalent to tax paid in the country where it was earned up to a maximum of the equivalent Irish Rate.

I think they are actually working today.. some rumour about a day of action as opposed to the usual days of in-action.

Ah yes, the usual pathetic remark instead of a rational thought

I imagine that this would not, of itself, be sufficient to bridge the gap between the different views on public sector pay, however it is a good example of the type of innovative thinking that could help us to develop a strategy to get out of the mess we're in. (A cynic might say that as a result your idea is doomed!)

__________________
“Are all dinner menus here the same?” - asked a key aide to Menem, the Argentinian president during the nineties, to the chef at the presidential residence.

“The menus change, the presidents change. What never changes is the dinner guests” - retorted the chef, referring to the cadre of businessmen who frequented the residence.

It may not be enough to close the total gap, we're not going to do that in a year anyway but this at least begins to address two of the usual sticking points of:

- What about the rich people who're not paying tax
- We didn't cause the problem, the banks and specualtors did

and moves the issue towards the common ground of we're spending more than we can afford, how can we deal with this reality?

There's still the last main sticking point of:

- We didn't benefit from the boom

but there's really nothing that can be done to address this particular point. While nobody in the Public Sector made any exorbidant gains from the boom (bar the very few highest ranked civil servants who got benchmarking II payments and found themselves with performance bonuses seemed to be guaranteed without meeting any performance targets), they did gain individually from benchmarking, national pay agreements and increments, and they did gain collectively from the massive expansion in numbers employed across the public sector. There are a multitude of people in the private sector who gained very little from the boom, many had been on pay freezes for years before the current crisis, being outside the national pay agreements. This should really be sidelined as a Public v's Private argument because the vast majority on both sides gained some comfort and a few luxuries in the boom, but not any real wealth, which was a gain made by the select few at the upper echelons of both the public and private sector.

I'd like to see targeted sackings, redundancies, redeployments and pay cuts rather than the blunt tools of blanket cuts.
The management of the PS is so impotent that the only way to cut jobs it seems, is to give incentives for people to leave voluntarily. Result of which is the more competent and dedicated leave as they have other options while the deadweight clings on forevermore.
I’ve worked in the public sector a few years and the single worst thing about it is having to depend on an ineffective colleague who just can’t be bothered anymore. Hardest part of the job is to keep motivated (it’s a very worthwhile job so shouldn’t be hard) and not letting apathy set in

You are genuinely trying to be constructive and make some very interesting points.

I think a lot of people who invested in buy to let property were ordinary people who borrowed 100%+ to do so. Those purchases were made in a climate where prices only went up and the safety net at that time was that you could always sell if you couldn't afford the repayments. But now they can't sell because there is no market and anyway they are in negative equity plus with no rental income there is a complete bind.

I don't believe that there are lots of rich people out there anymore, almost everybody has been badly stung in this crash\recession, in fact some of the biggest loosers are those who invested in property.

However I do agree that rent allowance is artifically propping up rent levels.

I can cope with my pay being cut. It is however galling to think that the same govt has mortgaged the country for the next 15-20 years in order to bail out a handful of zombie banks (one in particular). It is also galling to know that the rest of the money saved from the pay cut will undoubtedly be frittered away (like the billions before it) on our loony welfare state which ballooned while there was full employment for anyone who wanted it. It seems that to do well out of the system in this country, you have to be either extremely wealthy or a complete tosser. By the way, there are loads of the latter in the PS and nothing is done about them either.

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If Irish citizens choose to not live in Ireland or "benefit" (and I use that word very broadly) from Irish public services, there is no way you will ever be justified in making them pay for it, e.g., an Irish citizen living in the US or Australia for ther past 20 years suddenly being threatened with some sort of insane extradition for non-payment of taxes in Ireland where they may not lived or stepped foot in for decades?

For example, would you refuse to issue passports to people legally obliged to have them but who are resident and taxpaying in another EU state? The EU (including Ireland) has clear guidelines on tax residency.

Citizenship is not residency.

You make some very good points. I imagine the hangers on would be livid about your suggestions though and they would be supported by the unions.
What might be interesting would be a forced vote on PS workers on whether your suggestions would be implemented or blanket cuts.
Which way do you think the vote would go?