Just asking the question as I always assumed that once you were in the door on a full time contract that was it, you couldn't be sacked. This was repeated on Q&A on Monday and nobody contradicted this. What are the grounds uncer which you can be fired. I spoke to someone in a county council who said he had personnally fired several people over his career. Can anyone answer this question?

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Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

my better half works in the sector and she never heard of anyone getting sacked , i have my doubts about the guy who claims to have sacked loads of people the unions are genuinely to strong to let that happen.

Traditionally I believe it was the case that in order to fire a public servant, the Minister of the particular department would need Dail approval.
This is no longer the case, General Secretaries (perhaps also, Asst. Sec's) now have the power to fire people.

Having said that, it is still rare.

Firstly, to fire anyone (in public or private sector) you need grounds for dismissal. Gross misconduct would be the most common, but as far as I know there is no legal definiton as to what constitutes 'Gross misconduct'.
I am aware of one person being fired for gross misconduct. It was either this or face criminal charges of theft, ultimatley leading to sacking anyway.

You can be sacked, but it is rare. Incidentally, giving the state of employment law nowadays, sackings in the private sector are not as common as you may think - the burden of proof rests with the employer to show that a person deserved to be sacked and that can be quite tricky.

Why do the right wingers want public workers sacked so much? You'd swear having job security and a pension was a terrible evil the way some of you go on.

I don't want them to be sacked. I don't want anyone to be sacked. But if an under performing worker in the public sector were to lose his job if he was consistently below par it would give lie to the talk about them being unsackable and therefore would undermine one of the arguments that is regularly used to bash PS workers.

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Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

The mechanisms are in place to dismiss workers who regularly underperform.

But the simple and direct answer to the OPs question is yes, PS workers can be sacked.

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'Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.'

Inigo Montoya.

Surely persistent underperformers and those with persistent high levels of absenteeism should be sacked or made redundant. Health Boards have many such types.
Nobody would want the higer performing public sevants to go and there are many of these. Many civil and public servants have told me PRIVATELY that they are fed up with fellow ''workers'' who are lazy, incompetent and unproductive. They admit that the situation is nothing short of a disgrace. They can never say this in public of course.
It seems to me that behaviour is tolerated in the public sector that would never be possible in the private sector. Why should this be the case?

Worked in a council a few years ago.
It was frowned upon if you did more work than was required.

I know a woman in a HSE office who told me that she was threatened for starting a few minutes before the official start time by a supervisor.
I wonder is this common?

I know a private sector worker who was beaten by his boss with a lunchbox for turning up 2 minutes late