Brian Lenihan is the Marie Antoinette of Irish politics. He has just done a deal with the management of the Irish banks which even the bewigged last queen of France (bred into the regime, like Lenihan) would not have tried to get away with.
Not only should he lose his political head for it, the entire regime is likely to fall as a consequence. This recapitalisation is Fianna Fail’s “let them eat cake” moment and the electorate will not allow them to survive it.
This botched recapitalisation is based on the economics of Noddyland. It is cronyism of the highest order and will plunge Ireland into a much longer recession than is necessary. Furthermore, the fact that the financial delinquents who run the banks have been rewarded for the economic vandalism that they instigated sends a signal to every foreign investor that Ireland is a banana republic.
The management of the Irish banks has played our Marie Antoinette like a fiddle. In poker terms, at the beginning of this process when the guarantee was announced, Marie Antoinette Lenihan held a full house against the banks, who were dealt a pair of threes. He was in an unassailable position and could have directed policy as he wished. Instead he prevaricated, with the upshot that the management beat him hands down. Not only have they kept their jobs but they’ve just snaffled an enormous subsidy from the taxpayer as well.
The banks’ top brass have engineered a deal whereby their multi-million euro salaries will be paid for by people on the minimum wage!
To make matters worse, Marie Antoinette is out there telling us that we, not they, have got a good deal. This is an appalling stitch-up and amounts to “stroke politics” of Congolese proportions.
The extent of the stroke is obvious if we compare the terms of the deal that we have been forced to do with the banks with the terms of any deal the international financial markets are prepared to do with them.
Just think about the value of the banks: The taxpayer has lent €4bn to the two main Irish banks at an interest rate of 8pc, in return for 25pc voting rights. According to the market, both main banks were only worth €3bn on Sunday, 25pc less than the government’s loan to them. And the banks’ management and boards are still in place.
So why is Marie Antoinette, acting in our name, trying to right the wrongs of a small, incompetent cabal? Rather than make these incompetents accountable, he has rewarded the very financial delinquents who got us into this mess in the first place. We can only assume that he is being advised very badly. Merrill Lynch is his adviser. This is a bankrupt bank, remember. So our State is being advised by people from a bank that could not even look after its own money, let alone anyone else’s! Could it possibly be that Merrill Lynch is more interested in future fees from the management of big banks when it comes to further borrowing than it is in the immediate fortunes of the country?
Something else stinks in this deal. For example, why give the banks money at 8pc when you know that 8pc comes nowhere near the rate which the market is charging these banks? Last weekend, you could have bought Bank of Ireland preference shares with a 14pc yield.
Marie Antoinette Lenihan, on the other hand, thinks that we should lend to them at 8pc! Why? Does he know something we don’t? Does he think that the bad loans in Bank of Ireland will be considerably less than the market does? No, he knows nothing more than the average Joe Soap. In fact, despite all his advice, this dreadful deal reveals a man out of his depth. He has just been conned by the banks’ management, who have told him the situation is so dire that they can’t survive if they have to repay at a rate higher than 8pc.
Remember, these are lads who said up to last week that their capital position was so robust that they did not need any money from the State. So, turning economics on its head, Marie Antoinette has risked taxpayers’ money at an interest rate that even the most idiotic investor wouldn’t entertain. This is a sick joke, but the joke is on us.
Now, having established that you have been robbed blind, let’s look at the pathetic economics of the deal. For a recapitalisation to be successful, bad debts have to be written down to zero immediately. This is costly and this is why the State needs to raise a lot of money rapidly to cover the mess. Equally, a “bad bank” needs to be set up like a financial skip, into which all those bad loans and rubbish on the “good” banks’ balance sheets can be thrown. The cost of the skip should be paid for by the “good” banks, because they have been the ones given a reprieve.
Such an approach, adopted by Sweden in 1992/3, clears the air and allows the good banks to start lending again. In this way, the recession is cut short by taking the pain up front and allowing the system to right itself. We have chosen the worst of all worlds. Marie Antoinette has condemned us to a long recession and he seems pitifully oblivious to this fact.
We are following the Japanese approach, which saw Japan plunge itself into a decade-long downturn.
First, no one is held accountable and the managers are given a subsidy rather than a penalty for bad behaviour. Second, the bad loans will not be written down — banks will use the State’s money to roll over debt service on bad loans, hoping that the recovery will miraculously arrive on its own. Third, the money advanced today will simply be swallowed up by the huge bad loans on the banks’ books — all of which were lent by the present management — who, lest we forget, have held onto their jobs.
The numbers are frightening. The Irish banks have a loan book of €450bn, of which probably at least 6-8pc will go bad in the recession. This means a total problem of over €30bn, and quite obviously the €7bn recapitalisation for AIB, Bank of Ireland and Anglo is only a drop in the ocean.
Make no mistake about it: our money will disappear in the next 12 months. Irish bank shares will continue to fall steadily as the extent of the dire loan book is revealed and we, the taxpayers, will be asked to stump up again and again.
The long recession will make a mockery of Fianna Fail; and when they are hammered in the polls, they will trace the tipping point back to this Christmas week and Lenihan’s “let them eat cake” idiocy.
I guess it’s an old joke now but just to remind you: “what’s the difference between Iceland and Ireland”
Ans: 1 letter and six months.
… it is possible China then Russia fall into anarchy and straighten out the Stalinists. India and Pakistan go head to head; that would give u twenty years to help us give up the ”pound-shop” mentality. We have to stop using slavery as a way forward, and cut back on our stupid demand for a prosperous life. It just can’t be that way.
Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Surely, Toytown.
Abandon the dead duck euro, b4 we suffer a Paraguayan style collapse.Fianna Fail will get crucified in June.Roll on the day.Do Alan Dukes and Garret Fitz still think a 2 pcent interest rate is such a boon?.
HELLLOOO ???? The Euro is the only reason we are not in the same state as Iceland now.
Change is happening fast. My main concern is that our creditworthiness which we are going to tie to our banks will drop so fast we will not be able to purchase energy needed to keep the lights on. Exaggeration? Oil prices are dropping, but our real income will drop even faster as a result of the great asset strip Messrs Brian L & C are orchastrating. We need to remember that there is a very sombre reason for bargains and good deals on the wrong side of Christmas.
While there’ll be nothing real happening until Mid January 09. The outrageous deal spoken off will not happen. You see, by then, the truth of the mess we face will have sunk home for many more of us (Irish are the master self deluders and it takes time for the light to shine). We will be lucky if there are just mere demonstrations hitting the streets outside the dáil. Where’s Bono and Geldof when you really need them!
Reality knocks – perhaps for the better. 2009 could be a time of positive change. Many thanks to DMcW for keeping his door open to the comments from all the brlliant folks on this blog and best wishes to all of you for the New Year.
“It is also worth remembering that the major mistakes made by the banks were centred on lending to property speculators, who are also part of the establishment. The bailout of the banks will also take pressure off property speculators and avoid forced sales of land and buildings.”
(Irish Times)
No cheap houses in the foreseeable future ..
as for Fianna Fail getting crucified-dont bank on it Naesa. I think about 50% of the electorate turn out for local elections (a little more for general elections) and most of these will again be the formidable army of civil servants; teachers; gardai ; quango operatives; farmers- and their extended families-all of whom are recession proofed and doing very well indeed thank you.!
When it comes to pork barrel politics-dioxin laden or not- the “Soldiers of Destiny’ play the numbers game with unapproachable skill.
Like Mr Mugabe they may have turned the clock back 30 years in this country-but they know the election game with a pragmatism bordering on total ruthlessness.
( Neither will their their voters be waiting in dole queues or dying on waiting lists for diagnostic tests or urgent surgery in public hospitals)
All a challenge to their formidable propaganda machine in the coming months..
Tim – Teachers in Ireland get the highest hourly rate of pay, for hours in front of the class in the entire European Union. Their basid pay is utterly ridiculous. And one third of them are utterly useless. A fair sized proportion of them have nothing better to do with their time, except get involved in politics. End result, Enda Kenny, Mary O’Rourke, Mary Hannifin, Noel Dempsey, Joe O’Toole etc… We need to cut teachers pay until it equals teachers pay in Britain. Our educational standards are falling. Our kids are more interesting in rugger than calculus. This is a big problem.
We have two main problems.
i) Our cost infrastruture is too high.
ii) Our public sector is bloated and expensive based on the age of the population, the size of the multinational sector.
iii) There are too many useless people in Ireland in good jobs. They all have certain things in common. They have titles.They are underqualified. And they got there thanks to nepotism. As a society we have placed nepotism in front of merit and hardwork. We will have to reverse that to fix our society.
iv) We have to accept that bank C and bank D are effectively unsalvagaeable. If the government cannot run the health system properly, then it has no business in banking. Bank B is probably going to the wall also. Let them go, and do so in a manner than causes the tax system the least grief. Let the banks go bankrupt. Pay the depositors. And then rebuild the financial system from the survivors.
Biffo has a long term plan for the productive economy. But there is NO plan for the financial economy, or the public sector in any time frame. This is a Extremely Serious problem.
Ah thanks for clarifying that Deco – There was I thinking that irresponsible bankers were responsible for the current recession in the economy . . . . when it was the teachers all along. How foolish of me.
Really – Cop on to yourself. There are many bloggers who are attracted to websites like this and are leaving contributions basically attacking the public service in Ireland – blaming the public service and/or unions for the dreadful state of the country rather than placing the blame where it really belongs. In particular teachers are notably always the number 1 target.
In your points you above you leave absolutely no evidence for the spurious claims you are making.
“Teachers receive the highest rate of hourly pay in the EU” – Where are you getting that information from?
You then go on to state that the basic pay of a teacher is “utterly ridiculous” – Is € 31,000 pa basic (which is less than the average GDP per head in Ireland) really an ‘utterly ridiculous’ sum of money to be paying a newly qualified teacher whose responsibility it is to act ‘in loco parentis’ and educate up to 150-200 children per week in a post primary school?
“One third of teachers are utterly useless” – A childish untrue comment. Go to the website of the Department of Education & Science and click on the ‘inspectorate’ and read their reports on visits to primary and secondary schools.
Furthermore let me also inform you that Kenny, O’Rourke, Hannifin and Dempsey are politicans in Ireland because they effectively inherited seats passed onto them by members of their family or, like you say, by nepotism. I’m really not sure it has anything to do with teachers.
“We need to cut teachers pay until it equals pay in Britain” – Well there would not be much cutting to be done there. Would you also be in favour of providing a € 5000 grant to teachers who teach in Dublin like the UK Govt does for those in London?
“Our educational standards are falling” – I agree to an extent with this comment and they have been falling for a good number of years especially in vital areas like Maths & Science. I’m assuming that you are blaming teachers for this decline in standards. Could the fact that we have the worst funded education service in the EU have something to do with falling standards?
Also when the budgetary cuts were recently first announced the teachers were the first to go in the public service. Over 2000 teachers will lose their jobs next May – the vast majority of whom have given years of hard-working service. Indeed on the day the bailout of the banks was announced (last Monday) the Department of Education wrote to individual schools to inform them that further job losses would occur (only reported on by the Sunday Times). In addition over 31 other cuts in Education (including removing funding for a book scheme provided to disadvantaged children) were announced. I’m sure you were delighted with that.
Deco – The next time you wish to attack teachers, or nurses or gardai – well perhaps you would like to declare your interest. The public service in Ireland is a mess. For a population of 4 m, there are over 800 Non-Governmental Organisations in Ireland and they all funded by the taxpayer.
In my view it says something about the morals of a country and its leaders when € 9-10 billion can be found for irresponsible banks and bankers (without any job losses or board resignations) whilst funding is removed from education or on vaccines to 12 year old girls to prevent cervical cancer.
Finally you state that “Biffo has a long term plan for the productive economy”. Absolute Rubbish. Biffo hasn’t a clue what’s going to happen next week.
Deco
Have to agree with Tim. You’re effectively repeating the mantras of the elite who wish to pass the buck from the politicians/bankers and other wealthy people at the top of the pyramid to teachers. The public service is a general term which is abused in the mass media – I would wish to see and expect more discretion from the people on this blog. There is a big difference between teachers as a body in terms of their contribution and cost effectiveness and the various quangos and state sponsored bodies which are littered with political appointees.
If you wish to make a comment about wastefulness in the public service Deco you should start there (ie Management in FAS, HSE administration etc…). When you’ve exhausted your rants against those areas then perhaps you could address areas where education could be improved.
Well said Deco, the bloated public service should be pruned but it is too hard to sack these parasites. Other sectors of the economy/society suffer instead. This is the danger that powerful unions pose to the nation, we should also examine that. When our Noddyland economics fail and we are begging to the IMF or world bank for help these yokes will still have their jobs and perks.
John Q Public: I have worked in both sectors and you don’t know what you’re talking about. The word “parasite” as a blanket phrase to describe all public sector employees says it all. Grow up and think about solutions rather than scapegoating a few hundred thousand people for problems which are facing many countries, not just Ireland.
Deco, your points are factually incorrect. The best paid teachers are in Finland and Ireland is 11th from the top in salary, number 1 for time spent teaching in the classroom, number 27 in terms of cost to the exchequer, number 1 for educational divident; high return for little investment = excellent teaching and learning.
Stop promulgating the idiotic spin and lies of those who want to privatise everything in the “free market” – look where that has got us now.
Ireland’s public service is the smallest in Europe, per capita.
John P. Quinn, how DARE you call the people who teach our children “parasites”!!?? On a starting salary of €34K before taxes and pension deductions??!! Foolish and WRONG.
I doubt anyone could deny there is gross inefficiency and waste in the public service, particularly in the upper echelons.
However that being said, I have a sneaky feeling the real reason the public service in general is being fingered so much in current “punditry” is to tee up a neat game of divide-and-conquer. Setting the ordinary shmoes of the private sector at the throats of the ordinary shmoes in the public sector will simply distract attention from the real perpetrators of this mess – the bankers, developers and their political puppies.
Public-sector pensions are extravagant (index-linked to current salary for that grade rather than the person’s salary on retirement) but it’s all gonna be pretty academic when the national pension fund is cleaned out in order to keep underwriting ANIB’s mounting catalogue of bad-debt chalk-offs – there simply won’t be anything left in the kitty to pay those pensions. Nor will the NPF be able to plug the shortfalls in private pension funds – the cat’s out of the bag on that one, but no-one knows how big the cat is yet. Joe Public and John Private will be left to fight over the crumbs of a long-since-eaten cake.
Other contributors have mentioned the possibility of riots – I reckon it’s a question of “when” rather than “if”. A savage mini-Budget in January, then three months’ worth of bumbling in the face of further revelations, jobs carnage in the manufacturing and retail sectors (a la Dell, Zaavi, Harvey Norman, etc etc), real-life impact of the education and HSE cuts, a pissed-off nation on the piss…my money’s on Paddy’s Day putting the Love Ulster shmozzle in the shade.
Visualise the emaciated bodies of those emmigrants alongside the liffey river ‘en face de’ international banking financial center leaving our country for the last time demoralised and going to a strange foreign land where they do not understand the language or culture, they have been cheated on by the banking elite in Ireland .They have lost their honour they once had for their country and now can only think when they sing ‘ si na fee na fraud a ta faoi ngeall ag Eireann….’ their hearts are broken and have been ostracised and left with no choice to survive but to leave as they try to sing ‘ God save Ourselves …….God save Ourselves…..’ to the beating of a lone drummer ‘ .
The actions of Fitzpatrick once a trusted principled elected bank leader has created a treasonable act against the Irish Nation and Political Establishment and made a laughing stock of our Irishness in the International Community .He has shown up his Irish banking colleagues their ill practices against Irish State Public Policy and their irresponsibility in their duties to The Nation in time of affliction and attack .He is a Coward and so are all his cohorts who have festered this distructive deadly virus against everything we once knew as being Irish .He make the clowns in his Professional Clubs look innocent only time will tell .
He has also shown up the monkey politics of FF where they continuously deny the Electorate their empowerment to oversee that the Elite properly exercise their well remunerated responsibilities showing proper care and consideration to those that make Irish Banking possible and has highlighted ‘the moral hazzards’ that damm the citizens of Ireland to a wasteland .He has given his surname to a group of bankers a bad name and is now added to ‘boycot’ and ‘lynching ‘ etc making more gangs more respectible than his own .
John Q. Public, I mean …….. sorry, the red mist decended!
Tim – you will note “HOURLY rate”. Irish teachers have a 22 hours week. Teacher unions too favour a free market, in sectors other than teaching. But they want their own sector to be rigged by unions and politicians, and kept insulated from the willingness of the rest of the economy to pay for what we are getting. And what we are getting is declining standards, and dumbed down exams. And I had a very interesting conversation with a teacher in 2004 about this at the time of the Leaving Cert exams. She told the examinations in Ireland are being steadily dumbed down. She was very passionate about children, but kept saying that the politics of the teacher momement was too influential on the teaching profession, and facilitated bad teaching practices and teacher-politicians. Until then I had believed all the PR stuff from Joe O’Toole etc… Then, what was really happening, suddenly dawned on me. So I feel obliged to make my commentary, so that her message does not get forgotten.
The rest of us have to provide our labour in the free market. We are called the private sector labourforce. It seems that certain elements on the state payroll, are effective at keeping the rest of us in the dark as to what happens with our taxmoney. We would greatly appreciate better performance from the public sector. Our belts are being tightened for us, and we will not be able to lobby the political establishment to prevent it. Though the workers in Dell are hoping that something might prevent their plan being closed. The workers of Dell do not have the option of either a 22 hour week, or blocading the Minister’s house until they get what they want.
We do not have a free market in banking – we have taxpayer funded intervention. If it was a free market, then ANIB would have been over by now. And probably two more also. I am against any market intervention to save bankrupt banks. We need a free market in banking. And even if there is state intervention, it should be based on the priniciple, that the state capitalist intervention should return a profitable return to the taxpayer for capital invested.
Robert – I never claimed that the teachers were causing a more of a problem to the economy than the bankers. You decided that this was being said. You mentioned the term “teachers are notably always the number 1 target”. This was your decision.
You state – “Basic rate for teachers at 31 K pa.” Maybe this is correct – it should be investigated – or maybe you would prefer if it was not investigated. Last Saturday I was talking to relatives, one of whom is a teacher who earned €62000 pa last. She has four years experience. Is there any other sector where this would occur ? She is annoyed over her 7% pay-cut next May. In the context of so many people being laid off, or going out of business, I think this is a bit rich.
Noel Dempsey did not inherit a TD seat from a family members. Hanafin’s father was a senator. Mary O’Rourke of CIE, and gave us the Eircom board of directors. These were responsibilities that were completely beyond her. This is what happens when a political party has too many teachers – they put teachers in charge of departments for which they have no competence or knowledge. MOR started as a teacher, and she still treats everyone else in the Dail like children !!! There are other teachers in the Dail, and on local councils. I remember during my own secondary education, when the three main political parties had teachers in the school. They canvassed in elections, and spent a lot of time talking politics. They were highly politicised. In fact they even did class surveys of us kids to see which parties got support from our parents. As a kind of a pre-cursor to determine how the vote would come in. I would not consider that to be part of the education process. In fact, I consider it to be a waste of taxpayers money. If you said you were a don’t know, you got goaded into making a response. Afterall authority regard dissent as a great crime in Ireland !! Perhaps this survey experience is what Tim would include as part of the “number 1 for educational divident”. We also had teachers promulgate their views on all sorts matters with a definite political slant, when this was not part of the curriculum. Even in maths class !! As a side note, you will that Irish litreature is rich with childhood stories, where the class teacher has a political slant to communicate, and this is to be communicated into the pupils. Sometimes it even got bet into them – and it was not always the Christian Brothers who did the drilling. I do not know of any surveys in comparison compares with out countries. It would be interesting. But I never seen this in such evidence in English or American litreature.
If you want to compare yourself to a teacher in the UK, then consider the possibility that teachers in the UK, are of the opinion that British teachers do much more work. Here is commentary by one.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/1101/1225321621904.html?via=mr
A friend of mine, working in accountancy, got a promotion and moved to London from 1999 to 2001. It was his break. So he had to take it. His wife, a primary school teacher went with him, and took a teaching job in London. She figured that it would be much the same as in Ireland. And New Labour were making a big ho-ha of Education. As a teacher she could take as much time out as she wished, and her job would be waiting for her, on her return. A luxury that not everybody in the private sector gets. They both wanted to sample a new lifestyle. She enjoyed the lifestyle – but did not like the requirements of being a British teacher. Even with the bonus supplement for living in London. So she came after one year, in mid-2000. My pal came home in spring 2001. He joked to me afterwards, ‘she has a career, I just work, like everyone else’.
I want to assure you both that I know where I stand from talking to teachers. It seems that teachers say one thing in private, and their unions say something entirely different at official level in public. If the teachers have a vested interest in taking as much money as possible from the taxpayer, then we the taxpayers also have an interest in preventing any form of market distortion or gouging.
There is a lot of PR from teachers unions concerning their role in the Celtic Tiger. I have worked with Irish, Brits, French, Dutch, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Spaniards, Poles, Russians, Indians, Americans, Chinese, etc.. the Irish educational system does not turn out as well rounded, or as competent workers are other countries. And it is defintely not number 1. That is a load of hogwash. And we should get honest about that. Our biggest advantantage here is low taxation. And as Dell have found out, you can now get this in Poland. So we are in big trouble here.
It is a free country – we are entitled to provide our opinions and analysis in whatever regard we wish. And you are entitled to ignore or respond, to any such analysis if you feel your profession is not sufficiently accomodated. But, maybe, the teacher unions “doth protest too much ??” I am not against teachers – but I think teachers unions have created extremely hysterical campaigns, that indicate to me that they are very agressive when it comes to creating entitlements from the rest of society, which can no longer be funded. Yes, we should help our teachers. But most of the time the teachers unions seem to want money as a means of dealing with everything. And then when the money runs out, they decide that it is not a good idea to look for money, so instead go looking for something else. If the teachers unions are busy gouging the taxpayer, and with the effect this has on the teaching profession, how many more ‘Sean Fitzpatricks’ and ‘Breffni O’Briens’ will Irish society be creating in the future ? It seems as if we will have more wheeler-dealers in Ireland in the future, than in the past !!!! In Ireland we have a highly politicised teaching profession. It seems to me that to be assessing how much of an influence they have on society, except the teacher unions, and active politicised members of the teacher unions.
A critical assessment of the teachers in Ireland is long overdue. If they pass that then fine. But there are a lot of issues that are not seeing the light of day, thanks to teachers unions. In the media, Emer O’Kelly, is the only one of our journalists who is brave enough to provide any objective assessment of the teachers unions, and their various campaigns. Apart from Emer O’Kelly, nobody is prepared to take on this powerful vested interest. Tim tried to put teachers in the same category as low paid workers. I responded with my entry – because I decided that enough was enough. For the sake of the real low paid workers in this economy. And for the sake of all taxpayers. We need an honest objective assessment because teacher unions constitute a very powerful entity in this economy.
Robert – lastly I did not criticise the Gardai or the Nurses. Never mentioned them. I am fed up with quangos, nepotism, waste, pet project spends, dithering politicians, brown envelop based public tendering, brown envelop rezoning decisions, lopsided contracts, political appointees and the many layers of management in the public sector. So is every other commentator on this board. My interest is in this country, and making it more efficient, and more accountable. Otherwise, Ireland will fail. We need a debate on any debate on the issue, which might prevent economic and societal collapse, and the misery that it would create. And we badly need to throw out some myths in circulation about this country, and about how our “success”.
Deco, 22 hours is only classroom time for teachers – it does not include the rest of the work (marking scripts and tests, preparation, administration and reports, etc., and then there is all the extra unpaid time for weaker kids needing extra help and the extracurricular contributions to music and drama, debating and sport, the Young Scientist Exhibition and…….. the list is endless.
The friends/relatives of yours who (you say) are teachers seem highly suspect;
1) Every OECD report over the last ten years shows Ireland having the best educational dividend (euro per euro invested across the entire OECD area, Irelands students perform best in the standardised tests. Fact.)
2) Your “Teacher-friend” on 62K is lying: that figure only appears on the salary scale after 32-35 years of experience – not four. See the proof here:
http://www.asti.ie/faq/salary.htm
On UK teachers, no-one wants our system to become as messed up as theirs; teachers in the UK spend more time doing paperwork than they do engaging with their students – thiat is not education and their students’ scores in the OECD tests show their poor results. I wont even entertain praise for the UK system.
Your friend’s wife who “As a teacher she could take as much time out as she wished, and her job would be waiting for her, on her return. A luxury that not everybody in the private sector gets.” is also lying: the longest career-break allowed to a teacher is five years (three for most, as decided by their Board of Management), unless one is seconded to the government in some other capacity, such as An Dail or the inspectorate).
Teachers are in the same category as low paid workers, Deco, and you will see that if you do your research. 31K before tax is low pay for someone who spent four years at university to qualify as a prerequisite for the job; it is beneath the average industrial wage, therefore, “low-paid” work. (then, there is having to gain 30 years’ experience before earning 60k!)
Look at the salary scale I pasted in for you a few lines up.
Look at the SUCCESSIVE OECD reports on education performance.
Get your facts right: the LAST thing this economy needs right now is ill-informed people wasting our time.
The PS costs are actually beside the point. The dogs in the street know there is a management deficit in the PS for a whole variety of reasons. Call it nepotism, cronyism whatever. Also, blaming those on the coal face is inappropriate – and anyway, many of these are usually the most conscientious to their work function and the most distant and most shafted politically.
Maybe it is too early to call. We are in the silly season right now. But, if heads do not roll in the banks, then one can only conclude that this regime/administration is basically aiding and abetting criminal behaviour (facilitating the moral hazard is too watered down an accusation) to the detriment of the Irish state. What that’ll do to our reputation and standing in Europe and wider is anyone’s guess.
People are starting to wise up to what is going on. But I cannot help feeling this is only for the private sector – those who really understand the global impacts – and I hope I am wrong. What this column needs to explain is why the PS is so-called secure jobs may not be so secure in the not too distant future. We need to kill this “them and us” nonsense that FF so love to play and we so indulge in this blog. The PS are a very necessary group who need to survive this mess.
Also, the TDs who are hanging on for dear life need to know they are party to creating a right mess for themselves and their cronies for the next few decades. Surely there are 3 or 4 of them who are starting to think that being part of FF is a career limiting exercise. Get on yer phones – cos we are months away from a major cockup and these guys need to be reminded of their responsibilities.
I agree with you regarding the PS. Speaking from experience of both public and private sectors the most frustrating thing about the public sector is the amount of process that actually hinders getting the job done and makes it difficult for people to take initiative and, therefore, be held accountable. The lack of real performance evaluation hurts conscientious employees while there seems to be greater politics behind promotions. However, I’d accept this is subjective. The lack of effective performance-related pay increases is what keeps the unions powerrful. The quite arbitrary notion of seniority as a reason for promotion and pay increases counters the even more arbitrary politics of many career promotions. Sometimes the result is grim mediocrity but it’s a mistake to assume that most employees in the PS is doing the bare minimum and running to the shop steward everytime they’re asked to do something inconvenient. On the other hand political promotions and arbitrary pay increases/freezes can be experienced in the private sector also.
It’s also worth noting that Ireland recently lost a case in the European Court of Justice relating to fixed term workers and their rights. The case was taken by IMPACT and AFAIK the ECJ referral came on the back of a challenge from IMPACT’s legal council that Ireland was acting outside of European law in their discrimination against fixed term workers. The ECJ ruled this was the case. The point of all this is that the 91 IMPACT members who took the case were not given the entitlements that the rest of their PS colleagues on contracts of indefinite duration were. Benefits including contributory pensions, guaranteed pay increases etc. There are many workers in the PS who have all of the disadvantages in terms of relatively low pay and none of the advantages like the great pension and job security. Many workers who would be delighted with perf-related pay and a level playing field on promotional opportunities. Even within the PS there’s a “them” and an “us”…
On the subject of the bank management Lenihan has told the banks to live up to their promises of raising cash from shareholders and/or institutional investors. If they can’t do this heads will definitely roll. Whether he would appoint the right people in place of the current executives is anyone’s guess but several of the senior civil servants in the country don’t inspire confidence.
“There are many workers in the PS who have all of the disadvantages in terms of relatively low pay and none of the advantages like the great pension and job security. Many workers who would be delighted with perf-related pay and a level playing field on promotional opportunities.”
Case in point, seeing as teachers are the subject of today’s two-minute hate: in the secondary school in which my partner teaches, 14 out of approx 30 staff are “whole-time temporary” i.e. year-to-year contracts, no security.
The latest wheeze is to exploit that insecurity by “hoping” / expecting / demanding that whole-time temporary teachers supervise classes for sick colleagues UNPAID.
Across the secondary sector, whole-time permanent posts are routinely advertised purely as a window-dressing exercise while the temporary incumbent gets the job i.e. no promotional opportunities.
I’ve seen the same things happen. However, under law There are now a few obvious examples PS unions trying to stamp out these kind of double standards like IMPACT & SIPTU. Here’s an example http://www.siptu.ie/ucd/ftc/
It can make you awfully angry when people are calling you a public sector parasite and you’re working ridiculous hours with no job security. Hence my comment that the proposed PS clear out is being called for by people who don’t understand the PS, have never worked there and can’t comprehend that those who would be first to go are probably those doing the most work. Not saying everyone else is lazy but fixed term contracts focus the mind and necessitate a flexible and pragmatic attitude to your duties and hours. It’s also rife for abuse.
Robert, I have already stated that finding billions for bankers, and scrounging money from vaccines for 12 year olds indicates that the political establishment are mismanaging tax funds. The bankers should have been sacked. And the banks should have been rationalised from the top down. Otherwise the taxpayer taking the hit again.
Mediator Actually I already have. Repeatedly. Right across the board. And I have criticised protected sectors of the private sector also. But should we create a corner for protecting unsustainable market or non-market arrangements in the economy, which do not have societal benefit. I propose not, because we are facing a massive societal crisis. We are in serious trouble, and the entire economic infrastructure needs to get cost efficient. Otherwise we will see massive societal chaos. But all I see is dithering, fudging and campaigning by various vested interest groups. These, in my mind are symptoms of a society that is still in denial. We have accepted the boom is over, but no individual is prepared to take his responsibility and try and put things right. We cannot afford denial. Throwing money at education or the HSE or any other sector will not solve anything – because it has not worked for the last ten years. Neither will the current ‘leadership’. We really are doomed. Our best hope is to have an open, no sacred cows, intellectual debate about the state of the country, the economy and our society. But instead it seems that every form of debate is laced with homages to vested interests, which are politically entrenched, and expressed in a myriad of forms. This means that this country is DOOMED.
Deco, we are only doomed if we continue to have media focus on ill-informed opinions such as some expressed here by you.
You speak of becoming “cost-efficient”, yet you have not accepted my post, nor read the OECD report that proclaims the Irish Education system the MOST cost efficient in the whole of the OECD area.
What you claim you want is already delivered in spades by the teachers in theis country, with empirical and objective evidence; so why do you attack teachers? why do you tell lies about their salaries? why do you tell lies about their conditions of work?
What are you on about?
No issue with the job they do, but I do know a chap who retired at 56, his wife (also a teacher) job shares. They certainly do not have a curtailed lifestyle (shopping is the wife’s favourite pastime). To achieve this in the private sector would require significantly more success at one’s job than either of these people have achieved (do a fine job, but nothing remarkable). To me that is inefficient.
Deco,
You are blatantly using this forum as a means to spread lies and misinformation about a profession with whom you’ve declared “one-third are useless” at. I don’t know what profession you are in but I certainly wouldn’t have the audacity or cheek to criticise the competence of one-third of you and your fellow professionals.
31K per annum before tax is the basic starting wage for a teacher who spent 5 years at University. You seem a bit surprised to hear that – Well go and check out your facts on the website of the D.E.S..
Your claim of a female teaching relative on 62k after 4 years experience is a blatant lie. Period.
I agree with you that examinations have been dumbed down. There is no doubt about that. Nevertheless you should be aware that teachers have no say in setting examination papers. Indeed the dumbing down of examinations has been occurring right across Western societies for many years now and it is wrong. It is more of a sign of the playstation generation that is growing up in Ireland, a generation which never saw the 18 % unemployment of the 1980s – a generation which has known nothing other than excess.
Your claim of being “the rest of us in the dark as to what happens with our taxmoney” is complete nonsense. This is why I keep referring you to http://www.education.ie.
You talk of the tragedy of the workers in Dell losing their jobs. It is a devastating consequence of a loss in competitiveness in Ireland. We have priced ourselves out of the market with regard to competing with Eastern European countries and the far East and it weas only a matter of time before these multinationals simply said “enough is enough”. Our devastatingly poor infrastructure with expensive costs of energy and business are costing us dear now that the economy is going south. The problem for this rests squarely on the hands on the Politicians and what is the first action they take – sack over 2000 teachers in addition to cutting funds and services right across the education sector. Name one other country which has launched this attack on its education sector. Only in the banana republic of Ireland would this occur. Incidentally the dismissal of 2000 teachers in Ireland would be equivalent to the dismissal of over 30000 teachers in the UK.
You talk of the banks receiving a “taxpayer funded intervention”! Nice term that for a “bail-out”. I don’t hear of any job losses in that sector. The 1.5 billion poured into ANIB might as well have been piled up in the phoenix park and burned. It’s going to go the same way as their share price and the markets won’t be fooled by Lenihan’s stupid intervention to save the bacon of his mates in ANIB. Incidentally the 8 % “profitable-return” is 12 % in most other EU countries – part of the reason why the financial times referred to Ireland as a banana republic recently.
Your talk of teacher-politicians from your experience ion school is something I take with a pinch of salt. Teachers are no more political than any other sector of Irish society.
The Irish Times atricle to which you refer (I read it on the day) has everything the anti-teacher lobby loves. Written by a teacher in England who retired. If you look in that article there is no mention of the dates he worked in England and only a fair comparison with Irish education can be made with those dates furnished.
You talk of the luxury of a career break (which are available in the private sector also) in teaching. This is a luxury denied to thousands of non-permanent teachers. Of course there are no luxuries in the private sector. All those bonuses down thorugh the excess of the Celtic Tiger years were obviously a myth.
What “hysterical campaign” have the teaching unions fought? Recently they fought against rising class sizes, against cutting funding for disadvantaged children, against cutting funding for specialised programmes setup by the D.E.S., against cutting funding for Physics & Chemistry in Schools, against removing teachers from chidren who require special educational needs, against rising costs at third level. It says a lot of your attitude if you consider these “hysterical”.
You call for a “critical assessment” of teachers and the teaching profession – already underway for years, I refer you again to http://www.education.ie
Finally your referral to Emer O’Kelly as carrying out an “objective assessment” on education is nothing other than laughable. You state she is the only “Journalist” brave enough to carry such a duty. The reality is that no-one agrees with her.
Deco,
I have been reading through these posts with increasing ire…while it is apparent that you seem to have some sense of the problems facing Irish society, your extreme rhetoric and lack of compassion for the most vulnerable in society are disturbing. You speak of the notion of ‘sacred cows’; thus I would assume the child dying of leukemia, the child with a severe intellectual disability, those families living in poverty, to name a few should do without appropriate medical, educational and social welfare supports; all of which are supported by public sector employees. While I agree I have picked on fairly emotive examples, this was needed in order to bring you back to reality! It is all nice and academic when you do not face the front line of these concerns on an every day basis. Please be cognisant of this in future postings. Thank you.
deco – please move on to the real issues banks and bankers
Deco,
You’re claim of a teaching relative on 62K after 4 years experience is nothing other than a lie.
Tim – I am assuming that all teachers in all countries spend an equivalent amount of time on extra-curricular activity. There is no evidence to suggest that Irish teachers spend more time correcting homework than their counterparts in other OECD countries. Most teachers simply do homework, and are not involved in any other extra curricular activity. I am basing this on my education. There were seven male teachers who big into GAA, out of thirty plus teachers. These teachers played GAA, and some soccer. So this was more a passion than work. Though Brian Kerr got paid for doing less shouting than them. But the other teachers never seemed to bother doing any form of extracurricular activity. Nothing, apart from homework. Oh,yes, some teachers offerred grinds on in the evening – and they were getting cash. It was the 80s, and most of us wanted to get into third level as quick as possible so that we could earn some money, which was scarce.
Besides, if a postman is training the local soccer team, does this entitled him to work less hours with An Post ?? You see, I am not entirely convinced about this argument by teachers. My school never participated in the Young Scientist exhibition. There was not enough time. Basically it was a case of study for leaving and get to college/ a trade.
Regarding the anecdotal evidence I supplied. I am going on exactly what I was told, straight from the teachers and their spouses. If the lady claiming to be on 62 K, is not really on 62 K, then she must be lying. But that is the exact figure I was told-otherwise we have a case of status obsession.
Regarding the teacher who left to work in the UK, retention of her position was a minor priority, in her return, compared to better terms in Ireland. She loves especially the length of her working day-and never complains about teaching terms and conditions. I think having priveleges for teachers who are in the Dail is a form of inequality against other employments. Do factory workers, or engineers have this privelege ? Perhaps they do-but it seems unlikely.
Based on what I have seen of Irish workers, and foreign workers, I do not think Irish workers to have benefitted from a better education system. We might like to think we have a better education system. But, if we have not a education system that is not competing, then we should acknowledge this, and not delude ourselves into thinking that ours is the best. Maybe we have a better education system, but the Irish employees are dissolving away it all in a sea of alcohol. If this is the case, then we should fix this problem – and this is the responsibility of the Minister of Health !! (about which nothing is ever done).
Can you please explain the following the term from your ASTI link ?
{ Qualified casual hourly rate (incl. 22% holiday pay) = €46.29 }
This is extremely generous. I am thinking, I do not know anyone who gets this level of pay for ‘casual’ activities, anywhere.
Please explain to this private sector taxpayer, who has under continual deadlines, who has productivity measured and assessed continually, what exactly a teacher must do to get 46 Euro per hour ?
Now, maybe that is how a teacher who is on basic pay of 34-36 K manages to increase their salary up to 62 K :))) This I think is an important peice of the jigsaw.
Deco, “I am assuming that all teachers in all countries spend an equivalent amount of time on extra-curricular activity”
Why would you “assume” that ANYONE would do this work for free? Do you work for free? Can I “assume” that you do?
The casual hourly rate is what is paid to teachers who are fully qualified, but who have only between one and eleven hours of work per week – highly qualified, but few hours available; and no, a full-time teacher CANNOT augment her salary to 62k with this – it is reserved for part-time personnel only.
You really are intransigent.
Deco,
The world has moved on since the 1980s. Your ability to put forward a coherent argument is appalling.
You’re basically embarrassing yourself.
Incidentally do you have children?
Did/Do you educate them yourself?
Tim – I am not attacking teachers – But I am totally sceptical of teacher union leaders, especially when many teachers are part of the poltical establishment. Especially Joe O’Toole. I have listened to him avoid all sorts of issues, on the radio. And he is an INTO boss.
The entry in the ASTI link
{ Qualified casual hourly rate (incl. 22% holiday pay) = €46.29 }
I mean if the teachers are entitled to this fine and well. But what is done to get this rate of pay. As a taxpayer, I want to know !!
And please forward me the OECD report. As a taxpayer, we should see this, so that we know what value for money we are receiving. The real world experience leaves me wondering. Just about everybody seems to think that engineers from several other OECD countries would have done a better job with just about any part of public planning, than Irish engineers. Now granted the best engineers never get drawn into public contracts in Ireland-because of the corruption. It was probably sacrosanct to criticise the US education system once. Criticism should be a spur to improvement. We should welcome it. And if it really is teachers pay that is the issue, then we should know. But, as far as I can see, the teacher bosses have their own careers.
John Allen – you are right. Bankers need to be made accountable. In fact the bankers should be replaced.
But we need to address key issues concerning the human capital formation process in this country. Basically, we need to know how come there is so much disorganization and incompetence in this country. The human element is the key factor. Especially as we are defining ourselves as an information economy. Maybe a debate on the education system might enlighten us into how we will intellectually upgrade ourselves, so as to fix all the disfunction in our society. The quality of public debate in this country about public issues over the last ten years has been abysmal. And it has been dominated by vested interests. Now, we must follow the example set by David’s documentary series – we must go above all of that, so that all interests are served, to the detriment of none.
Re Comment by Deco, December 27th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Well said Deco. Now we might look at the salaries of prison officers. One of the main reason we cannot afford new prison spaces for criminals.
It goes on and on. The facts are stark. We are now borrowing money to fund wages for politicians, their numerous cronies, and the public service. Unsustainable.
John McDermott, I you want to be a prison officer, why don’t you go right ahead and be all you can be, man?
Otherwise, lay off whining about other people’s jobs, ok?
How about that for an idea?
Let’s not allow the spin doctors to win by getting the public and private sector workers at eachothers’ throaghts. We are not the enemy.
Deco, forget Joe O’Toole; he has not been the INTO boss for about ten years, just a senator whose brother in law got 30 million euro for his farm in North Dublin to be turned into the next “superprison”. He lost the right to speak for teachers years ago, when he sold them out for his own big fat-cat salary and expenses. In the early nineties, teachers’ salaries were almost on par with those of Oireachtas members; now teachers’ salaries are about 25% of those of the Oireachtas.
Research your facts before you publicise an opinion, please.
Google the OECD report yourself; it is called “Education at a glance”.
Deco, you know the problem with the engineers at public service level was that the government refused to pay them the going rate, so they left for the private sector and the local authorities hired “engineers” with diplomas instead of degrees and got them cheaper.
Pay peanuts……..
Hark Hark – do we have distractors in our midst who wish to divide to conquor ? Call in the Clowns .
John, “Yes, we do!”.
Yes Please Teachers , Leave our Kids Alone ( and our economic and social blog ) , and return to your wees . Wu Tang Man, 2009 will be the cultural revolution , for if A drunk paddy told his teacher here a decade ago that a black smoking man would lead America , they would have thrown you from the cLass .
Brendan, if ANYONE had told that particular story a decade ago, they would have been ridiculed. Look back at Paddy Powers’ odds on it just two years ago, for God’s sake.
Look at what they said about David McW just six months ago, when he foretold the truth?
Pointless comment.
Tim I have to assume you are a teacher by the stance you take here in protecting the hard work they do after the five years they spent in college .
But please while my comment was in your opinion pointless, it is as valid as your retort with regard to the ‘rat infested schools’ ,…that comment was without doubt pointless. Where there are schools in a state of bad repair I haven’t seen any teachers over the last few years of prosperity taking to the streets to demand better conditions for these students and why didn’t I , you don’t want to rock the boat been in the top of Europe’s best paid teachers with shortest working week and longest holidays , My girlfriend is a professor in Spain and she would love to be here earning the money you take home.
Please don’t tell us of all the extra work you do correcting papers ( you get paid extra for this) after school sports, and helping the slower children don’t make me laugh.!.
if you were that worried about the rats in the schools you have a lot of influence with the parents of these children and the ballot box , but no teacher in Ireland from primary to university is going to cut off the hand that feeds you and has you in your recession proof positions .
I hope you enjoy the rest of your school holiday while the vast majority will go back to their jobs with apprehension this Monday, you will be having your rest for another week but no doubt you will be preparing report cards for your up coming mid term break in another few short weeks , if your not taking your students on the sking trip this year
Brendan, you seem to believe too many lies for me to begin to deconstruct them here. If you care, you can see earlier posts to deco and check the salary scale link and read the OECD reports yourself. For the record, I have two children in primary school and I do not see any rich teachers – a few who are married to wealthy businessmen, alright. I am constantly impressed with the work they do with my kids, though and I know that I could NOT work in a cramped classroom with thirty kids aged 8 or ten.
Tim – you state { forget Joe O’Toole; he has not been the INTO boss for about ten years, just a senator whose brother in law got 30 million euro for his farm in North Dublin to be turned into the next “superprison”. }
This is scandalous. I mean, this is a man who gets on the media and gets worked up and ‘outraged’ on a very regular basis. About all sorts of issues. In fact he is usually ‘absolutely outraged’. In fact being outraged was the key part of his public persona. Now I know why I never trusted JOT. Well, JOT, I am outraged :)))
Thanks for telling us what the 46 Euro per hour is for. Alright, fair enough you have proven your point concerning pay rates, though I am still very suspicious.
I checked your OECD report for 2007. And I have checked the indicators. It has interesting statistics. Now there are two important questions that need to be answered, for the entire society.
i) Where does the Irish education system rank, relative to our international peers in terms of results achieved ?
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/15/39245059.xls Percentage of students who complete tertiary education of total. Tertiary A. New Zealand is top of the class. Scandinavia comes in next. Ireland is average, similar to UK. Tertiary B Japan is way in front. Ireland is second most years.
I do not know if this enough to place us number 1. Overall Japan would be number 1. And even then, it is a crude measure. Third level degrees in medecine are more useful, than degrees in archeology or dead languages.
In maths scores in primary level, we are average, and South Korea is tops, on a similar expenditure per student. Though Korean teachers spend most days in school. It is possible that Korean children have cultural advantages – namely, everybody takes education seriously.
ii) Is the PAYE taxpayer getting value for money ?
Well, this is based on results above, and expenditure per student.
iii) Do we have effective systems of accountability ? (because there is a lot of discussion about accountability these days)
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/3/39290945.xls
There are six criteria. For Ireland five have no metric being measured. But even if there was a metric, would anybody trust the fiigures, that they were not doctored to protect ministers etc.. ?
And finally two questions need to be answered for the benefit of the teachers, in particular;
iv) Are Irish teachers underpaid ?
I checked the following graph – http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/1/39290909.xls
Now, I can see clearly that Irish teachers’ salaries are number 3 in the EU, after Luxembourg, and Germany. Finland is average, with salaries well below Irish rates. I suspected that Hanafin was buying votes with our tax money, before the last election. This graph seems to back up this theory.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/2/39290929.xls shows me how many hours/days teachers in these countries work per year. And it is clear that Irish secondary teachers spend less days teaching than any other country except Italy.
Together these graphs would indicate that Irish secondary teachers earn more from a days work at school than anybody, with the exception of Luxembourg – which is a tax haven the same size as County Wexford.
v) Are Irish classroom sizes too large ?
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/0/39290870.xls
Our primary school classrooms are on the large side in the EU scheme of things. But the Koreans and the Japanese cope with much larger classrooms. The British are equivalent. Which would include the North. Our secondary classrooms are below average size.
I conclude that the performance of Irish education according to OECD figures is not in any way, remarkably better than others. In most tables we sit in the middle performance rank. And we should stop deluding ourselves and get real with the need for improvement. The only area where we are strong is in our tertiary B science graduate production – but we are well below Korea. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/15/39245059.xls
This is due to the performance of our tertiary vocational sector, the DIT, DCU, UL, etc.. which were established in the late 1980s. This
was inspired by the US Community Colleges and British Polytechnics model – but done better here.
The issue of how adequate teachers pay is compared to the cost of living in Ireland, is something that every other economic sector also has to deal with. Basically costs are too high for all workers. This has nothing to do with the OECD report. This is a problem relating to the fact that whole sectors of the Irish economy, have oligopolistic arrangements. The source of the problem is with the ‘Economic Rent Infrastructure’. And the best way of tackling it is via competition in sectors of the protected internal economy.
Private sector workers are taking paycuts. And some are taking the dole. We cannot ask Batt O’Keefe for a pay rise. To us that looks really absurd. We can’t even get Biffo to fly to Texas to try to help Dell. Overtime, and annual performance bonuses are becomming scarce, but layoffs are becomming more common. The private sector workforce needs price deflation, to bring down the bills, because money is getting scarce. Ireland needs to drop costs to maintain private sector employment. For this reason I regard every proposal to increase government spending with forboding. There is no money there. The rich rezoner speculator class are in Portugual, circumventing the tax system to ensure that they will not pay taxes. We private sector workers have to pay enough tax for the public sector, social programs, all the waste eminiating from state expenditure overruns, and now more bailouts. And somehow or other create the growth in the economy. It is getting to the point that it is just no longer working. We are running out of income to pay for everything. This has been a problem five years ago, even before the mountain of debt was built up, even before Bertie Ahern bought power with the benchmarking deal. This economic crisis was documented in David’s article about the Commuter belt Deckland Depression. And this is turning point of the Irish economy, which will determine our short and medium term future.
Fianna Fail may have taken advice from the failed beancounters at Merrill Lynch but that was only part of the package.The advice of political advisers.cronies etc.would also be heard.This party feels it has a divine right to rule this country.It has faced down all manner of scandal and skulduggery in the past.To suggest that Linehan and Cowen are some sort of gobshites making up policy on the fly is dangerously foolish.Its very simple.In order to maintain the status quo and get re-elected [ the odd loss is acceptable] you have to look after the people who can make that happen.You have to foster your own millioners,a nice loyal private bank or two,pander to the public service and their private contractors,beat the euro-table on behalf of the farmers and the rest of the policially active and your as good as home.Throw in a few economic bribes for the less astute amongst us,job done.The property bubble would have bursted and been mopped up with a few casulties if its was’nt for the fact that it happened at the real wrong time.The last thing the soldiers of destiny wanted was a bunch of international f….rs putting “our homegrown policies under the spotlight”.How the hell do you buy them off.”We will chance them with 4bn from the pension fund and see will they go away,if that does’nt work we hit them with 4bn more”If that doesnt work try the old public inquiry trick for a few years and they.ll get fed up,it worked a good few times before.”bye the way brian did all our people get their money out on time we stalled for as long as we could,there will be bargains aplenty in 2009″
“Do we, or do we not, accept the advice of the GALACTICALLY stupid”?
Guys, I feel somewhat frustrated by the fact that Deco never addresses any of my retorts; he seems to, simply, carry on regardless.
So he is achieving his goal then? :-)
Emmergency – there is nothing written in SBP today by DMCW …am I right ?
Guys, move away from the PS slagging. And Teachers and whatever slagging as well. The whole issue of paedagogy and its deployment is a complex one. What people get paid etc is but a small part of the picture.
Back to the 2 Brians – Jim above is spot on. These “Brian” guys are not stupid at all. They are playing for time – but awkwardly we are now subject to external observation that cannot be paid off. Their only hope is to do a runner and keep the back door open for as long as possible before the ship sinks. That’s the basis of the strategy and it all seems to make sense. The electorate are being fobbed off with side issues and little grants here and there. I’d not be surprised if the kids of these guys and their cronies are being enrolled somewhere foreign for next post summer 2009 start. I wonder are the houses going for sale? Look around them and see what is happening. The actions revealed there will show things up quickly.
Tim – sorry about not replying yet.
I will have to take your word concerning the payment of €46 per hour for teachers on the casual hourly rate. I think this is very high pay for any hour of any kind of work.
I have listened to Joe O’Toole on multiple occasions, in various states of outrage(absolutely outraged, completely outraged, utterly outrage, etc….) He also pops up on TG4, in various states of smugness. Now, I don’t buy JOT and his various stances. He made a career out of teacher union politics. I find the Fingal Prison proposal scandalous. Yet more dubious dealing, politics and planning controversy. As JOT himself might say, we are all outraged :)))
I will review the OECD report, for it’s contents.
Deco, you know that a car mechanic’s labour is charged out to the motorist at €80 per hour to fix your car?
Is servicing a car valued more highly than serving your child’s education?
Clearly, in “Ireland Inc.”, it is!
Main headline on the Sunday Indo – 70 000 jobs in retailing are for the axe in the new year. This is a cathastrophe. We have already lost over 100 000 jobs in construction. And now our industrial workforce must face more hardships.
Dell is now in serious trouble. Therefore, much of the industrial workforce of Limerick is in trouble. This has happened due to the failure of our politicos to fix the cost base issue. They dithered on since 2002 concerning the cost base inflation, are still dithering on the cost issue. In fact they even caused a lot of it with various vote buying schemes.
We are now in serious trouble in this country !! Our expensive cost base, is driving our industrial workforce into the labour exchange.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/limerick-braced-for-bad-news-from-dell-1586768.html
Exactly Deco, it is going to get worse. That is the long-term effect of the demands of wage increases and the power of unions, they can in effect suck dry the profits of an organisation. Over 50% of MNC’s say they regret coming here in the first place.
We did not stay competitive as a nation and look at us now. Also we have huge amount of foreigners on the dole now which is a drain on the state.
I don’t know why we are all so surprised about this impending economic calamity in 2009. We have a leader who simply cannot operate or function to any capacity when the pressure is on.
We’ve seen this before when Cowen was Minister for Health, this is a man who can’t think or act when he is under pressure, when the fight or flight moment comes upon him, he chooses flight, and there is a clear track record of this.
The man simply has no leadership ability and should do the honourable thing and get off the pot and let someone who can inspire and lead people, take the country from this point forward.
We haven’t got 1,2 or 3 months of dithering and crisis management to spare here, this guy needs to go in January.
7th August 2009 report in Finyncial Tymes London –
more emaciated Irish were lying hungry along the quayside of the Liffey Dublin demoralised and abandoned by their unprincipled stewards of their corrupted banks and their deceitful elected politicians who lost all their pensions and savings and have by now departed taking with them all the spoils and hidden chests of gold they accumulated in the short time since the resignation of the first senior Irish bank chairman Seanie Fitzy .Their new monopoly money now known as ‘woodbine’ is only exchangeable with dockies who have surrounded a warehousse of grain imported and who only exchange one scoop per drag numbers in each woodbine traded .Many decklanders have made fuel of the wood surrounding their homes for coming winter and have taken to urban farming digging up all the green grass around their homes and local green areas and planting cabbage ,potatoes, and onions as most other vegitables will not grow due to floods .Protests continue at the empty Dawl ( House of Commons ) eventhough their political leaders are continuing their extended vacations in parts of the world frequented by other African dictators .
Those civil servants remaining working are paid in a new debased currency printed in a disused shed in ballymun and denoted by ‘a lark’ .The latest exchange rate to this is 1000 / 1 against the euro .The stench in the civil buildings is believed to be giving concern to a rise of cholera and untreated corpes remain unburied because of the dangers of contacting this deadly disease.
Lawlessness has broken out in certain parts of Dublin and other urban areas around Ireland and gangs roam around plundering large homes and farm barns .All the Horses in the midlands have already been shipped to America and France unlikely to ever return again .We will update you with more nyws as we receive it later today .This is Fynancial Tymes Nyws reporting from London .
Guys, does anyone here read Gene Kerrigan?
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/gene-kerrigan/dont-help-the-banks–take-them-over-1582376.html
I would be interested to learn what ye have to say about his slant on things.
Thanks for the link Tim – any article that starts with the words “Sean Fitzpatrick is a sneaky little bastard” is alright by me.
That was indeed a particularily brilliant article by Gene Kerrigan, peppered with expletives that escaped the usual national newspaper standards by the fact that they were, on this occasion, so essential to the content.
20th August 2009 – Nyw York Xchange Nyws – remaining solvent members of the accounting professional body in which the absconded bank chairman seanie fitzie is a member met today and after long deliberations decided not to penalise him and instead to raise his profile for life as a ‘freeman’ because he showed the institute how to survive against the hostilities of proper social consciousness , upright honourable duties , honesty , accountability and for fostering the national moral hazzards that make profits against the plundering of the ‘little people’ , and most of all deception of the Irish Prime Minister’s Judgements .Celebrations continues to late evening in Dohenys Pub. / This is Cyntia from Nyw York
Tim – you are unfairly comparing chalk and cheese in your analysis by definition – business charge out rates of mechanic or any other service and the wages of a mechanic are completely different so you can only compare the wages of teachers and the wages of the mechanic and not against the charge out rate ok?
John, why are you being deliberately obtuse? You know that a mechanic charges that for his own time on a “nixer”.
Could it be that, even now, “Ireland Inc.” still will not face its own misprioritisation of money and profit?
Kids in cramped, rat-infested, pre-fab classrooms with the book grant withdrawn from the poorest ones;
……. billions available to crooked bankers.
Yet, you persist in claiming that MY analysis is “unfair”?
What’s next? Spitting out your dummy and throwing the rattle from the pram?
Tim – yes you do continue to be unfair sometimes its hard to see the difference – remember please dont change the goal posts remain within context and in this case work as we know it within the law as is normally practiced …Tim your eyes are wide shut – enjoy your evening
I would endorse Jim’s comment above – the question is what can we do about it? Shane’s idea of a presidential style administration would appear to be the best way out of the failed system that we currently have.
The two Brians and all the other TDs sitting in inherited seats are in effect emulating the old aristocratic house of lords where the right to rule was determined by birth and not by ability. Although they may appear to go through a democratic electoral process, they are in effect a type of feudal lord to their constituents with the power to bestow great favours in lieu of their continuing support and this enables the loop to be closed for generation on generation.. As far as I know, no other country in Europe has anything like the percentage of inherited seats that we have and certainly none with such a high number in cabinet. This has to be stopped and Shane’s idea is the best solution so far.
It might be a good idea but I can’t see the likely circumstances under which it would happen. At the least It would require a situation of near anarchy where a new party comes to power, possibly on the back of a loss of confidence vote for the government and a governmental mauling at the EP elections precipitating a shock general election. Neither FF nor FG would propose something so risky as they both benefit from trans-generational seats and the general stagnation of politics here. Even for FG, the perennial election bridesmaids, such a proposal would likely see defections to FF.
Our electoral system reflects a parochialism in the Irish psyche. In many respects the problematic bits of our constitutional (ask any single father) seem to be perceived as sacred texts of Dev. FF want us to supersede our constitution with EU law without making a decent effort to fix its inherent issues.
They got lucky in the US with their founding fathers. They’ve still managed to mess it up with corrupted interpretations of ammendments. We Irish seem to like an amount of casual corruption in our politics. Everyone from grannies to developers want the murky waters of the parish pump flowing throughout the Dail.. Whenever a new minister comes in he/she goes on a spending spree in their constituency. It’s a joke.
A US style democracy would be cataclysmic change and we haven’t had that for a long time in Ireland. Indeed with the disintegration of the PD’s we’ve further homogenised the political parties. It’s hugely depressing.
The Walking Handshake from Drumcondra lulled us into believing we had turned some kind of economic corner based on transformative politics, economic sophistication and great ideas of successive FF governments. As the people of Limerick brace themselves for the Dell pullout it’s clear for all to see that there’s a dearth of leadership and imagination.
Many of the problems we’re discussing here have been around for years and have little to do with the credit cruch of financial meltdown. It’s only in a recession that there may be enough annoyance throughout the electorate to do something about it. Apologies for this off-topic rant…
Tim -I have read and been entertained by Gene Kerrigan. I consider his description of the development of the CJH estate in Kinsealy to be a masterpiece of both journalism and comedy. Kerrigan proposes many names for the housing estates, all based on various episodes of Squire Haughey’s extravangent and controversial career. It concluded the comment, and “of course, the entire development can be reached, by being led up the garden path”. Kerrigan has the guts to attack the mighty in Irish society, including Bertie Ahern for the last ten years.
Kerrigan is not sure about which economic policies will solve the problem. He is incorrect in saying the Brians are following an Austrian Economics policy framework-if this was actually the case, then they would have allowed the banks to fail, and let the rich flounder helplessly. This is exactly what Merkel is doing in Germany-she has been ruthless with failing banks. Merkel is more concerned with the rest of the economy, and the social cohesion of her society. Merkel prefers to wait until the banks have defaulted, before decided what needs to be fixed. I would not credit the two Brians with following any economic policy tradition. Neither are economists-both are lawyers. They must improvise. They are following instructions from the Central Bank, and the IDA. Their policy is not as Keynesian as that of Gordon Brown either. It has Keynesian characteristics – the Brians are deploying tax money (from the future) into the problems. The objective is to sustain the current state of existence-damage limitation. Biffo has an economic plan which he calls the framework – but actually it is really the IDA’s plan. And it is extremely loose on details !!! But maybe the IDA would do a better job of running the economy than politicians :)))
From my reading of the OECD links, there is no evidence that Ireland’s education system as consistently the best. Have the teacher union leaders not been telling us that it was the best for the past ten years ? JOT certainly has. I think that it needs improving. Is increased pay really going to increase educational standards and attainment ? Have the teacher unions any proposals to improve educational standards, that go above improving their electionability with members ? If not, then ideas are needed !!
Apart from this point, can we afford presently afford more payrises, with the state borrowing 19 Billion Euro in 2009, just to stay still ? We have an enormous short term financial problems. And nobody knows what the medium term shortfalls will be. The Denis O’Briens of Ireland do not “do taxation” !! The PAYE taxpayer, has to do it all. And this is overwhelmingly on the private sector PAYE taxpayer who has to pay full PRSI, pay a voluntary pensions, plan for job insecurity, handle international lower cost competition, and deal with banks which now regard private sector workers are more of a risk for mortgage repayment. I suspect that the entire education policy focus is drifting. And it cannot be allowed to drift because this affects private sector employment rates. This is a societal issue. The Irish private sector PAYE taxpayer is trying to keep the economy going, and has the task of lifting the now messed up Irish economy. The layoffs are rocketting, and everybody is really uncertain. The private sector income/jobs crunch is killing economic confidence, and forming a self-reinforcing loop. Every bailout plan makes the problem worse, because it all has to be paid back. And we do not have a Angela Merkel to take the perspective of the private sector worker taxpayer. Our taxes have been thrown all over the place, for a decade, with derisory results. Only Shane Ross seems to be doing anything about it !! (Incidentally he also thinks the banks should get nothing from the taxpayer).
And we are still preparing far too many arts graduates, (because this is cheap to do), and not enough science/engineering graduates. This is a third level problem – which nobody is addressing. What have the IDA to say about this ?
We have high attrition rates of nurses in our hospitals. The supply of local entrants to nursing seems to have disintegrated. Immigrant nurses are a sign that motivation is highest when the money can be sent home to low cost economies in the third world. And a nurse told me that she regards Liam Doran as a sell out merchant, who acts tough on TV, and then gives ground in every negotiation. Now, that could be just a moan. But we are losing nurses, and even the immigant nurses end up having enough. This would indicate that payrates for nursing are insufficient. But the nurses do not have vociferous unions. Dissatisfied nurses just change jobs. Nobody in the Dail is an ex-nurse, and there is no visibility in the political establishment. The HSE bosses don’t seem to care one bit. There is a problem in nursing. But the problem has no “profile”, in our environment of competing political interests !!
Ed – well Sed. The inheritance characteristic of the Dail, is a serious problem. The safety net for rejected inheritance chasers that is the Seanad, is an even bigger farce.
Feudal System – I endorse your statements ED . It is my belief that we as an Irish Society should retrace back our own inherited ancient Brehon Laws and disclose them to the public to be understood and applied to the days we now live in …these are laws created by Irish for themselves that became obsolete in the 17th centuary when English Common Laws were imposed ..these Brehon Laws was rubust and sustainable and respected and they worked very well better than the new codes . Professional Laws today are all adversorial and to the detriment to Irish Society as a whole and has now been seen to be proven correct . Changes are required NOW.
Systematic Statistics have proven over time that after a depression there is WAR before any recovery .
Deco, you are spot on about the nurses; but remember thelast time they asked for a pay rise? IBEC’s HR guy, Brendan McGinty (Private sector “union”, if you please!) brokered the “deal” that gave the nurses NOTHING. Liam Doran accepted it. He has always been a sellout. That was 2006 after 1997, when the nurses got nothing for striking, Mary Harney went to the Philippines, as Minister for trade and employment, to recruit nurses from there – rather than paying our own nurses.
It seems to me that the plan is to privatise everything – just read articles 113-118 of the Lisbon treaty.
Why should private sector representatives do government’s job? Sean Fitz aparently did this too, with the over ’70s medical card fiasco!
It seems that the rich private sector bosses are running the country and squeezing more and more out of everyone. Now, the sponge is nearly dry.
I usually find myself agreeing with Shane Ross, too.
Tim – yes the bosses are running the country. There is a culture of cronyism and crookedness. It is totally dominant. It is manifested in overcharging, the high cost of living, and olipolistic arrangements. And it has corrupted the entire body politic, and state tendering processed. It is at it’s most vile in north Dublin. In Ireland market rigging is very common.
We do not have a ‘free market system’ in Ireland. We have a ‘rigged market system’. It is ‘socialism for the rich and connected’. The entire scam worked until the credit tap was switched off. Then the facade started to crumble. There is continual market manipulation to benefit connected vested interests. NTR do it on the M50. But the ESB ar quite happy to do it also. The local authorities do it to shopkeepers, with urban rates, and then they close, and the business goes out-of-town. Competition Policy is rarely implemented in Ireland. And even when it is it takes years – just look at the insurance sector. And the state has a myriad of expensive charges and costly procedures enforced on the citizenry. This has made the entire ediface of the Irish economy expensive, overmanned, ineffective, overly centralized, bureacratic, corrupt, and inefficient. But on a societal level, it is absolutely devastating – as evidence by the wholescale substance abuse, high suicide, etc..
Concerning the ethos of the Treaty of Lisbon, you might be interested in the critique offered by Tony Benn, in two parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTjg-vt0Ao4&feature=related
Benn analyzed the contents. He is baffled as to why the Treaty of Lisbon instructs that capitalism will be the only basis of economic organization. Now, the US Constitution does not deem this necessary, and is completely neutral on the issue. In fact no constitution anywhere makes this sort of decision for society. Even the Soviets never wrote a corresponding law concerning organization so as to outlaw capitalism in their constitution-and allowed people to sell their own vegetables. This provision does mean that privatization will be a logical conclusion.
Now, suppouse that I was of the opinion that this law made perfect sense, always, and everywhere – this does not give me the right to dictate this as a policy-preventing others from organizing differently. And it is this aspect, the singularity, and the certainty of the policy that I find offensive. It is fundamentally undemocratics, and unaccountable. As a policy this is further than anything Mrs. Thatcher instituted – even she had limits of the implementation of ideology. Same with Reagan. This is an absurd law. The people, through their democratic structures, should have the option of deciding the most effective form of organization, as determined by the needs of the situation, on a case by case basis. It should be flexible. But with this type of straightjacket, the only option that can be chosen will be the compulsory option !!!
This provision is totally unnecessary. Eh, Biffo, Michael Martin, etc.. if you are reading this, perhaps we might get another opt-out of this as well ?? :))) in addition to all the other opt outs and declarations etc. which are law for us, but which are not legally binding on the other countries :))) [ though I presume you already read this provision, and decided in your wisdom that it was OK to have it it in....you did read it ? oh right...I see ] :))))
Deco, uh oh! I am finding more commonality between our points of view! I like this last post about Lisbon – alot! Thanks for the link.
The difficulty with public sectors around the world is well known, much argued about, and it’s probable trajectory is also reasonably clear.
We sit here, in our nice soft homes, and shake our heads at poor countries. We say things like “it’s really sad, they’re so poor they can hardly afford any schools or doctors. Imagine getting a tooth ache in (insert poor country name here)”. What we hear less often is “it’s really sad, they’re so poor they can hardly afford any farmers or manufacturing industry”.
We are a wealthy country, so we can afford schools, hospitals, and so on. You can argue “without teachers/doctors, the country will collapse” and you’d be sort of right, and also sort of wrong. (For people that we really truly can’t live without, immediately, think of all the sewerage workers and lorry drivers going on strike for a month).
When the part of the economy that creates the wealth deteriorates, we can afford less of the things we want. It’s simple really. The arguments then begin (see any European country, at various times, during the last 60 years) about which parts of the public sector get cut. Defence cuts were popular – except during WW2. No one ever recommends cutting sewerage workers.
Canny governments don’t cut anything – they simply engineer inflation, and then ensure that the public sector get sub-inflation pay rises. No one has to bother about the private sector pay, as the market looks after that very nicely.
The public sector is still currently living in the boom years. It will end.
It can be argued that, at the moment, almost no one is worth being rich. Very few people have created lasting wealth, so it can be argued that any large wads of money they currently have is false, essentially inflationary. It is part of the problem. After the great depression, many countries introduced a ‘wealth tax’ that simply charged people, annually, a percentage of their net worth. Countries need wealth creators, not a class of idle rich. It’s a tricky argument, as we also need capital, and most public sectors are not even hopeless at capital allocation.
If the government doesn’t sort itself out, history tells us that we will, eventually, have to go through all that dreary nonsense of finding a Winter Palace to storm, then of storming it, burning a lot of books, and finally, printing a load more – smaller and redder.
Stephen, “Canny governments don’t cut anything – they simply engineer inflation, and then ensure that the public sector get sub-inflation pay rises. No one has to bother about the private sector pay, as the market looks after that very nicely.”
……… that is very interesting………… but, haven’t the social partners agreed beneath inflation “pay increases” for the last 12 years already?
I remember 2.5% “pay increases” when inflation was running at 5%; and the so-called “benchmarking ripp-off” delivering 0% while inflation was 4.5%.
Even the condemned current “pay deal” delivers 6% over nearly two years and inflation was running at 4.5% a year at the time it was agreed.
So, according to your posting, our government has been “canny” for many years now.
The social partnership agreements were an excellent exercise in the government doing exactly what you say; and the purchasing power of ordinary people went down, year on year, with profits up and wages down relative to inflation.
Those same ordinary people were able to plaster over the cracks, as it were, with cheap credit while their mortgage equity was rising.
But, then the “cheap money” disappeared when the bankers screwed up and gambled too much.
Now, the cracks are really showing.
The fake “wealth” of equity in property in a hopelessly inflated market has been revealed for what it was : FAKE.
Tim
“but, haven’t the social partners agreed beneath inflation “pay increases” for the last 12 years already?”. I’m not altogether sure it’s actually relevant. The problem that the government’s going to have is that of a falling tax-take. They will have to do one of two thing, whether they, we, or God, wants them to: Cut expenditure or inflate.
When faced with this problem, they can cut expenditure and face trouble, or try and increase inflation enough to effectively cut standard of living of the public sector workers to match their new tax take.
From a political point of view, from the point of view of enabling them to stay in power, inflation is the canny route. It is comparatively quiet, it effects everyone, and it operates over months and years rather than “20% pay cut starting Monday”. Of course it is also horrible for an entire generation, destroying savings, pensions, and so forth.
The fact that the money people were making from property was ‘fake’ is also, in my view, not quite the point. Neither does fractional reserve banking have to be a bad thing. Imagine what the economy would be like if all that ‘extra’ cash had been invested in IPOs of great new high tech design and engineering companies? Batteries 10 times as efficient as they are now; photo voltaics producing power at half the price of current fossil fuel costs; operating nuclear fusion reactors; everyone eating healthily and exercising well; cures for degenerative diseases; etc. It’d be great today.
But we didn’t. We blew it on fuel for our vanities and insecurities: Cars, clothes, holidays, and exotic pharmaceuticals.
Maybe next time we’ll do better. We all live in hopes.
Stephen, “We” did not blow it on anything. I, and many ordinary people like me, just kept on working and living. I still drive the same 1997 car I bought back in 2002. I have no designer clothes and have never had a holiday, except for my honeymoon in beautiful Connemara for 7 days in 1995. I do not know what “exotic pharmaceuticals” are, but I could guess, I suppose.
I still work two jobs just to get by.
But I “get by”, and that’s my point, in a way; that’s all I need to do. I have never wanted or needed to be rich – too many “wannabes” out there already, pretending.
The problem now is that people like me may not be able to get by for much longer due to the wannabes gambling too much on the stock market.
We will wait and see and, as usual, like naive Boxer in Orwell’s novel, “I will work harder”.