An Bord Snip Nua wants 20,000 public sector job cuts.

[X-ray]

A surplus middle manager in the HSE pulls down in the region of 100k.

A badly needed teacher would be years in the job before they hit 50k.

Replace the one with the other and we've saved 50k per annum, plus provided a whole bunch more social utility.

Maybe an overly simplistic example, but it shows that costs could conceivably be cut without consigning all surplus people to the dole queue.

The flaw with this debate is that it is completely over simplified.

However in broad terms I agree with you. If what you are saying is that services must be protected as much as possible and those that are very well paid for optional extras should be the first to account for themselves. We know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If all public services disappeared in the morning which would you personally pay to have use of privately? they are the core ones that need protecting in my book.

[Gruffalo]

Is 20,000 really that difficult a number to achieve?

Havent there already been a lot of temporary workers let go. I know a lot of teachers who were not permanent were told that they are not coming back.

Also, you would imagine that 1% or 2% retire every year, given the recruitment freeze that should see a lot gone by the end of next year.

[hammer]

When did fatboy Biffo sign off on last pay deal under PARTNERSHIP ?
and what was he thinking at the time........................about his dinner probably

[X-ray]

Is 20,000 really that difficult a number to achieve?

Havent there already been a lot of temporary workers let go. I know a lot of teachers who were not permanent were told that they are not coming back.

Also, you would imagine that 1% or 2% retire every year, given the recruitment freeze that should see a lot gone by the end of next year.

thats exactly how it will be done, also no cover for maternity leave etc. It would not save money to bin existing staff as they have to pay to get rid of us. I would day relocation will be used more too and some areas closed and staff moved.

[Gruffalo]

thats exactly how it will be done, also no cover for maternity leave etc. It would not save money to bin existing staff as they have to pay to get rid of us. I would day relocation will be used more too and some areas closed and staff moved.

Personally, I think that that is the more sensible way to do it. It is probably in this thread, but how many are working in the PS?

[Mar Tweedy]

I wouldn't advocate slash and burn. We gotta we much more creative than that.

The total number of public servants is not a problem in itself, its the top-heaviness and skew to admin/management as opposed to frontline service delivery.

All of the people who loose their jobs needn't necessarily go on the dole. For example, are there 5 thousand surplus clerical officers who could potentially retrain as nurses? Win-win for them and the state in that case, they go from a low skill deadend make-work position to higher skill gig delivering a service that's really needed. Pay them a third of their salary for 4 years while back at college, and maybe provide some help repaying the student loan as a further carrot.

Similarly could we ease out any of the massive cadre of middle managers into doing a HDip on a reduced salary?

Interesting ideas. I think you are on the right track by way of reform. You may not have suggested suspending civil rights but some on this thread are! Also some on this thread seem to think that advocating to keep your job is some sort of a bad thing. Imagine, the cheeky upstarts, don't public sector workers know their place.

That sort of biliousness will get us nowhere.

However if there were to be creative positive approaches like you are suggesting Prop Joe, it seems more likely to me that reform could be of benefit, better services, smaller paybill, more dynamic workplace and opportunities for public service workers.

[X-ray]

Personally, I think that that is the more sensible way to do it. It is probably in this thread, but how many are working in the PS?

I have no idea and the 20k is probably picked out of the sky, this all happened months ago, spending and recruitment came to a stand still then on the ground.

[Gruffalo]

I have no idea and the 20k is probably picked out of the sky, this all happened months ago, spending and recruitment came to a stand still then on the ground.

Exactly so a percentage of that 20,000 are probably gone already.

[SamVimesBoots]

Personally, I think that that is the more sensible way to do it. It is probably in this thread, but how many are working in the PS?

IIRC somewhere from 300,000 to 380,000, depending on whether you count all the people in quangos and State bodies and boards.

It's funny how we're all more-or-less in agreement: we all want to protect frontline services, make it easier to retrain and redeploy staff, introduce a more healthy and dynamic working environment where people get rewarded for delivering instead of merely timeserving, and cut out all the waste and expensive "outsourced" scams. And that's just what they are, scams.

It's all just common sense. But hands up if you genuinely believe the current generation of politicians are up to the job? How many of you genuinely think there won't just be endless paralysis, strikes, in-fighting, backbencher revolts afraid of losing some votes, that the few reforms which actually get out the other side of that process won't end up being implemented in a cack-handed incompetent manner and completely undermined by petty obstructionism?

And how many of you think the electorate are grown-up enough to accept that the days of "one for everyone in the audience" gombeen pork politics must end?

We're not ready for this yet. Maybe in another couple of years, but for now 90% of the populace are just petulant and whining that their sweeties are being taken away. 90% of the people you meet just won't accept that the last decade was monumentally irresponsible and that we need to radically shift our core attitudes, most fundamentally of all in the way the citizenry react to and view the purpose of the State.

Gombeen politicians voted in by a gombeen electorate, whose only interest is in what they can scam off the State for themselves, is not an environment conducive to real reform, sadly.

[red leveller]

It's funny how we're all more-or-less in agreement

We're not in agreement in a lot of things though are we?

for now 90% of the populace are just petulant and whining that their sweeties are being taken away.

I have nothing in common with a worldview that considers it "petulant" and "whining" for people to oppose having their (often very modest) incomes slashed in order to prop up the banks and their bondholders, or their (generally already substandard) services diminished in order to take over the debts of those who made obscene fortunes from construction over the past years. It is neither "petulant" nor "whining" to feel that it is enough to have to pay a huge mortgage for an average house, without having to pay the liabilities of the ruling class as well.

And I am not sure you will stand over the idea that healthcare and education are "sweeties", will you? Or that an income of 60K (say 2 clerical officers not yet at the top of the scale) for a family, with a 300K mortgage and a need to pay private health insurance for their kids as the state has decided against having a decent public health service, is some form of luxury?