FAS terminates 52 staff contracts to "save money" on wage bill.

[euroboy]

Bertie Ahern was taoiseach during all of this, but his name is absence from much of the debate.

Cowen was minister of finance during all of this. Did he or his officials ever say to FAS stop you've got enough.

Now Cowen is taoiseach today and is defending the behaviour of those infected with the culture of entitlement and lavish lifestyles paid for by the taxpayer. Cowen is cursing that the story came out rather the content of the story.


The Greens, well what can you say, a ministeral salary has alot to answer for. Or maybe its the ministeral pension that they're thinking of. 2years before they become entitled.

In any case, this is where our budget surpluses went. No-one shouted stop, sure the money was rolling in. The party was in full swing. Anyone that expressed concern was branded a spoilsport or a loonie.

At a time when unemployment was falling, the FAS budget was rising. Im sure that left FAS with a headache.....how to spend all the money it didnt need.

Bertie didnt do anything, the exchequer wasnt tight for cash and had no incentive to spend wisely and with prudence. The Eurofin criticised McCreevey for not cutting back on spending(which would have helped control the wastage) and cutting taxes when we were overheating. But the people arent without blame, they didnt mind getting the tax cuts and stood up for McCreevey aganist the party-boopers.

So we are all to blame.

It is regrettable that it takes difficult economic times to address these issues but at least some good comes from recessions.


But has it?

[thebig C]

Yeah, I was shocked to hear this.

They are so arrogant they literally don't give a sh1t what the public think. I'll bet all the big shots in FAS decided that things can't get any worse from a PR point of view, so why not just dump the bad news now.

Unfortunatly that "bad news" is the livelyhood of 51 people. Ordinarily, I would be in favour of trimming back the public sector, but in light of the outlandish 500k goodbye payment to that degenerate.....words fail me!!

[yehbut_nobut]

In any case, this is where our budget surpluses went. No-one said stop, sure the money was rolling in.

And that is the essence of the matter.