Public Service Reform Plan

Looks interesting. But WHY does it take a foreign imperative for this to happen? Are we not capable of this in a soverign capacity?

Public Sector Reform? You cannot be serious!.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/1117/1224307707174.html?via=mr

THE SECRETARY general of the Department of Education and Skills will receive an annual pension of €114,000 per year when she retires shortly at the age of 53.
Brigid McManus will retire in mid-February when her seven-year term expires. In accordance with the terms under which secretaries general were appointed, she will receive a full pension of €114,839 per year. She will also receive an after-tax lump-sum payment of €204,000.
Amid controversy about the huge pension benefits flowing to senior civil servants, Ms McManus is voluntarily waiving an additional severance payment of €126,817 provided for in her contract.

Pensions for private sector workers pushed out to 67 years of age. And 68 by 2028.
Why worry about a two tier Europe. We have our own two tier system together with a transfer union from less well off to very very well off.

Love the wordle!

Couldn’t help notice how small the font on “new” and “change”….

@ Chameleon

For example: The private pension fund levy, Lottery win style pensions for senior civil servants, highest paid teachers in Europe, highest paid lecturers in Europe, highest paid public sector middle managers in Europe, one of the most expensive countries in Europe for public utilities. etc…..

An Irish ambulance driver earns as much as a brain surgeon in a properly managed country like Germany.

This lame attempt at reform does nothing to address these discrepancies. If Irish public “servants” think they have seen austerity I suggest they Google “Latvia & IMF” to see what is in store for them in the near future. The sooner we get a proper spending (not tax or a spending cut that is actually a tax e.g. the proposal where employers pay the first 30 days sick leave) correction of €15bn+ the quicker the country can recover. This is going to happen, there is no other alternative. I would refer you to Morgam Kelly’s last oped in The Irish Times where the mechanics of what is going to happen were laid out.

This milk and water effort will be heavily marketed by the government as radical and significant. It is neither of these. Duplication of posts, responsibilities will still persist across local authorities, education institutions, and various state offices that are pinned across every county. It is very difficult to calculate an optimal number of public servants without falling foul of subjectivity, a little on a par with asking someone working with grains of sand have they made a heap yet. The government talks about efficiency but doesn’t make any effort to quantify it. Even with a population increase in the past twenty years, one wonders if a return to public sector numbers of the early 90s should not be clearly identified as as the longer term goal. This would not necessarily involve redundancies in all cases. The Third Level sector could be privatised in its entirety and make its own way. Local councils could hive off more of their operations to private entities. More private health care, etc. instead, what comes across very clearly from this recent document with its reliance on ‘merge’ rather than ‘cut’, is that privatisation is off the agenda, completely.

What hope is there that expenditure reform (define as you wish) can be achieved without lining the pockets of shareholders in Serco, G4S, Capita and the other mega-profitable beneficiaries of public service outsourcing in the UK?

Retrenchment seems to be great for dividends.

have they estimated the costs of the new “smart” initiatives? IBM et al will be licking their lips

@ OllieTwist
“Our leader goes to meet Angela with a straight face when we still pay our PS people to retire in their early 50s on €100k plus annual tabs.”

Let’s keep things in perspective. This kind of pension arrangement is only available to the 14 or so Secretaries General, and very few of them are of the age to retire in their early 50s. And the amounts will be reduced very shortly.

There was a public service reform process in the 1970s. In fact Richie Ryan had the portfolio that Brendan Howlin has now. Mysteriously, in 1977, that momentum died.

The OECD takes up the story a decade later.

The process that led to the programme evolved in the late 1980s and early 1990s following the demise of a major reform programme – Serving the Country Better – which has been launched in 1985. This
programme, though it left its mark in the areas of top management appointments and information technology, was generally not well received and, following a change of Government in 1987, was not pursued thereafter with any great vigour or conviction. Politically, it was seen as closely associated with the previous Government and the new Government, in the context of the then very adverse budgetary situation, did not give high priority to its implementation. Management, for the most part, had not welcomed the programme and were not wholly committed to its
advancement. Insufficient involvement in its development and a widespread feeling that it was being imposed from the centre are generally accepted as the reasons for the relative lack of support

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/37/1910889.pdf

As that report discusses, there was another public service reform effort during 1994-97. The report was written in 1999, but again mysteriously momentum already seems to have been fading as of, say 1997.

I’m struggling to see the common factor in 1977, 1987 and 1997 … maybe an enterprising commenter can help out.

@ Joesph Ryan,

It’s not the non residents you should be worrying about… it’s those who are resident.

@ Richard M,

I would gladly swap my salary for those of a German teacher… provided I could avail of the German tax free credit… which is 8000e as against the 1.8e for the Paddy.

Not all is what it seems.

I work in the Public Sector and I can’t believe the weakness of this report. It looks like it was drafted by the unions and then watered down extensively. Just look at all the wishy-washy language:

• Placing customer service at the core of everything we do
• We will identify…/We will seek to progress …/ We will continue …
• We will seek all opportunities …
• We will streamline …
• Maximising new and innovative service delivery channels …
• Effective engagement with our staff …
• Strong focus on implementation and delivery …

If anyone doubts that this is going nowhere just look at Section 3.4 and bullet point #4 underneath.

However, there’s good news (for public servants) – many new jobs with great titles. Personally, I’d love to get the one called ‘Shared Service Transformation Manager’. Why? Great opportunity to earn loads of expenses travelling around the country checking on progress. A few foreign trips to see how they do things abroad could easily be justified also. Best of all: no real targets and you’d always be able to blame someone else for lack of progress. Just remember to write reports regularly bemoaning the lack of progress and use this to justify recruiting more staff. Very soon you’d have your own little empire.

Those that might call me a cynic should remember that a cynic is just a frustrated idealist.

P.S. Listening to the radio today I can’t believe the number of serious journalists who have bought this nonsense.

@Bunbury

IMHO apart from a small number of “Golden Parachute” jumpers most public servant must be pretty annoyed with their Union reps over this proposed cut in numbers and “reform”.

Instead of modest pay cuts of 5-20% (and a 5% “catch up” increase for new employees) in 2014 , on salary payments over Forty thousand Euro, the size of the public service is going to be reduced further while “PS bashing” will still continue .

Ireland may not be able to afford itś public service and salaries are currently far too high compared to the private sector (and other Public Servants throughout Europe) but that does not mean Ireland does not need itś public service.

Perhaps some Public Servants should remind their union reps that union levies are paid so that the ordinary Jane or Joe Soap is protected, which includes ensuring that they are not the subject of mass resentment within the state.

Jane or Joe Soap will still be union members after the “Golden Parachute” brigade have bailed out and ceased to be union members.

The same fiscal savings could easily have been achieved by 2015 without having much affect on the vast majority of public servants or any further reduction in numbers.

IMHO this is not bad governance (whose main objective is to maintain industrial peace , keep the”lights on” and moderate expenditure) but shortsighted labour representation.

@ernieball

“I have no doubt that you desperately want to believe all of that. Alas, much of it is demonstrably false.”

if there is one thing that’s clear from anything related to the public sector wages and conditions / utility prices / croke park progress / PS reform etc……….it’s that very little connected to these issues is “demonstrably” anything.

IMO – this is part of why there is so much anger directed at public sector pay and conditions. The fact that the public sector, with their armies of statisticians / PR companies / union leaders / government ministers*** / quangos etc cannot put these “rumours” aside makes most people think that what we hear about high pay and generous conditions must be true. We simply don’t have access to enough data to make a quantitative analysis. In addition, the “official” figures are all supplied by errr….the public service.

With the absence of trustworthy data, someone’s views on the issue comes down to anecdotal evidence and comes down to that persons general beliefs about the PS gleaned from urban legends…chats down the pub etc etc….right or wrong..thats what people have to base their views on.

For some reason the public sector wages and conditions issue is not being given the benefit of the doubt from posters like Richard M. To be honest, as an ex public servant…im on his side.

*** see simon coveny’s cringeworthy defence of >100K earning PS workers on last nights vincent browne show.

@chameleon

“I would refer you to the absolute rape of the public purse, by private “wealth””

eh??? didnt the raping of the public purse happen as a result of the government assuming full liability for all those debts?

AIB / Anglo etc would have sank like stones if the government had let them. In reality, AIB/BOI/Anglo were not private enterprises at all. AIB have proved this more than once.

In reality these companiesk whether technically public or private, are the same gene pool of the civil service and dail elites that continue to plunder the country’s finances with the support of the likes of Simon Coveny TD.

@stephen kinsella

“verbiage” – i assume you are referring to the Public Service Reform Plan when you use this word. ? If there was ever an example of verbiage, this report is it. The majority of the posts on this thread seem to suggest that some on here agree.

In addition, how are the posts on this thread either “off topic” or “rants” ? How people perceive the public service is key to how reports such as this score points with the voters.

Lastly, for some reason, you don’t seem to agree that excessive PS salaries are relevant to this thread. I would accuse you of bias.

How you can argue that these posts are off topic – on this of all threads ?

So I would urge you to maintain objectivity and let the blog perform its function.

@SK

If it was a complex document, it would be welcome. Unfortunately it a combination of rehashed reforms. From my limited understanding, the reductions would only turn the payroll numbers back to 2004ish levels. Hardly dramatic. Correct me if I am wrong.

There is no serious effort to calculate the minimum number of public servants required to keep the place ticking over. Now that is a complex task, one that requires giving serious thought to privatisation and involuntary redundancies. But instead the government prefers the fantasy world that sees civil servants retiring on pensions greater than David Cameron earns, and probably greater than any pension Chancellor Merkel will receive.

@JudgeJohnDeedes

I agree with your sentiments. An appeal for polemical restraint could be misinterpreted as a cloak for a censorious policy, and one presumes that was not intended.

@all

IMHO we need to remember that Stephen is the moderator and even if (in his own words) he may be “biased” whn it comes to the Public Service he does an excellent job of ensuring that this site maintains a proper level of decent and valuable debate.

I use a pseudonym (because I know this site is followed throughout Europe which has places where valid individual opinion is not as respected as it is in Ireland) and have strong feelings about certain levels of Irish PS pay.

However IMHO if Stephen feels the thread is turning into “verbiage” or ranting “off topic” then I think we should respect that.:)

This is an excellent site and I learn a lot from it as do (I am sure) a lot of other readers.

No opportunity to read this today, but to those that have, is there any sign in it of an acknowledgement that the budgetary situation has turned out to be significantly worse than was envisaged in March 2010; that the resultant high level meetings about non-implementation of the Croke Park Agreement (per 1.28) have taken place – and what the outcome was? Are the minutes going to be published?

Or are we all going to continue to pretend the government has no choice but to cut staff numbers and services instead of pay, and to do so without compulsory redundancies so as to guarantee the efficiency gains per redundancy Euro will be very much sub-optimal?

Is it a really rigorous document – not one of those with foundations in fantasy?

@Grumpy

On a scan re real dosh/capital – “pretend”

Some positives on certain ‘procedural’ matters

@Paul Hunt/Stephen Kinsella.

Well lets look at the options-This may or may not constitute a rant.

The report is drivel. Why. Of the five major commitments to change three are drivel, (i) (iv) (v), and of the two that are relevant , (ii) and (iii), one is both self serving and untrue.
Lets take the two commitments that are relevant
(ii) Maximising new and innovative service delivery channels;
(iii) Radically reducing our costs to drive better value for money;

The first is essentially a commitment to edelivery. Fair enough. This should be happening every day.
The second, reducing cost is simply untrue.

There are only two ways of reducing cost in any organization, cutting numbers or cutting wages. Cutting numbers will result in poorer service. It might be mitigated to some degree by a shifting of ‘service’ to edelivery but that has definite limitation. You cannot edeliver a garda to the scene of crime or a edeliver a nurse to hospital ward.

Faced with a choice of reducing wages and increasing the level of service, as now committed to, and holding wages at existing levels while reducing staff, the government and PS has opted to keep up wages.
It is a fatal flaw in the whole reform agenda, further compounded by the statement that PS wages will fall by approx 2.5 billion. (Min Howlin, I think). Yes, maybe they will but PS pensions will probably increase by €1.25billion and as most of the retirees are at the upper eschelons the tax/USC take will probably fall by about .5 billion.
So the overall net saving will only be definitely less than 1 billion.

And further €2.5 billion saved on 37,500 people means that the average retired salary is approx ~60,000, all of whom are being retired on pensions of ~30,000 or more.
[I work in an organization where most people do a full years years work for that kind of money.]

I don’t buy this report. Nor do I buy the grandiose payoff scheme that underlies it.
All it will do is saddle the rest of the workforce with the cost of pensions associated with it. We should not expect any improvement in service. The PS will do extremely well to hold service at existing levels, while retirees will be off in the sun or commenting on world affairs on blogs etc.
It is a grossly inequitable solution, the consequences of which will be borne by those continuing in employment in both private and PS and the thousands of unemployed and underemployed throughout the country.

@Joseph Ryan,

I intended no criticism of people like who identify themselves and write with knowledge and passion, as you have in this case; nor of those who contribute constructively under pseudonyms and provide valuable knowledge and insights. (Indeed I believe Mr. Bond should be awarded an honorary pseudonymic doctorate by the NUI and TCD – and that Messrs Zhou, Hogan, Grumpy, DOCM, Bryan G and many others deserve honourable mention.)

As for this topic, I believe it will be a long drawn-out process because the mond-sets that have to be changed have been set for generations and a culture of entitlement has become embedded over the last decade. But, at least, some effort is being made, despite your major and justified reservations.

@all FYI

The Croke Park agreement on public service pay and reform is unsustainable and needs to be renegotiated, the chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee has said.

Speaking after a speech in Dublin this morning, Fianna Fáil TD John McGuinness said the pay and pensions of staff in the public service were being protected under the deal.

He said that only 58 per cent of the workforce in the country had a pension while 42 per cent had not.

“But those 42 per cent who cannot afford a pension for themselves are contributing to the pension of the public sector. It is creating a two-tier workforce, it is creating a two–tier pension scheme and it has to be renegotiated.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2011/1118/breaking28.html

@Paul Hunt

Don’t forget John the Optimist, and a good few others ….

@ grumpy

My mother used to say: expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.

It will be interesting to get the ‘savings’ data for 2012-2015.

Netting off pension and inducement costs will leave very little.

@ All

This is Irish reform — so it’s a trip on the slow boat to China.

The word ‘will’ is very common and the slow-motion speed of response to what the OECD called in 2008 a quango ‘organisational zoo,’ cannot inspire confidence.

How many people will be paid for doing nothing is relevant because quangos would have people of particular skills and they’re hardly going to make tea for the officers as an alternative.

There simply is no point in moving people to jobs that they have no interest in doing and why would they muster motivation when there is security of employment?

There is no radicalism from the aged socialists; a constitutional amendment would not be required to lift the veil of secrecy on the €15bn public procurement budget but mind transplants may help.

Why should the idea of transparency for public purchases be so shocking?

The issue of resentment about public perks has been raised.

For decades the state broadcaster has threatened the ‘little people’ with shame and embarrassment before the courts for non-payment of the mandatory licence tax.

What is striking is the absence of shame and embarrassment among the so-called RTE ‘stars’ in recent weeks as they feebly justify their outrageous earnings.

The Irish Independent said Marian Finucane earned €513,270 in fees in 2009 for her weekend shows.

She denied working for just two hours each Saturday and Sunday but last night she couldn’t clarify the exact number of hours she works during the week in preparation for the shows.

She said there were “endless hours of research” for her shows, which run from 11am until 1pm on Saturday and Sunday on RTE Radio 1.

“My radio goes on at seven o’clock in the morning and when I’m finished with Vincent Browne (on TV3 at night) I go on to the international channels. That is all part of what I do. I would think it was funny if it didn’t make me cross, but I don’t think anybody believes that (I only work four hours) anyway,” said Ms Finucane.

Tough times indeed! Wonder how the sense of entitlement can spread like a virus.

Historian Richard Hofstadter wrote on the last three decades of the nineteenth century in his renowned book, The American Tradition, which was published in 1948: “From the business of industry the business of politics took its style. Accumulating wealth and living richly, the industrialists set the model of  behavior for the less scrupulous politicians. The wealth they acquired and enjoyed set standards of consumption and emulation; overflowing into politics, it multiplied among politicians opportunities for pecuniary enrichment. Standards of success in politics changed. It was not merely self-expression or public service or glory that the typical politician sought–it was money. Lord Bryce found that the cohesive force in American politics was ‘the desire for office and for office as a means of gain.’ The spoilsmen looked upon political power as a means of participating in the general riches, of becoming wealthy in their smaller ways and by their lesser standards, as did the captains of industry. Never before had the motive been so strong; never before had temptations been so abundant.”

@Paul Hunt 10.41 Am

+1

@Thomas Duffy, The Alchemist

There is no doubt in my mind that there are inefficiencies in the public service and duplication of effort*, and that the reduction in public service numbers won’t result in a 100% proportional decrease in service, but the idea that we can cut half the public service staff, or drop to 1990s levels, is frankly ludicrous. Are we going to drop to 1990s level population while we’re at it?

* A prime example of the latter is the fact that the electronic linkage between PULSE and CCTS is incomplete, so that charge sheets entered on PULSE have to be reentered on CCTS.

@Kevin Walsh

The little economics I know, I learned from my widowed mother. Her repertoire of lectures was limited – “we must live within our means!” and “willful waste brings woeful want!”. If we have revenues of approximately €30 billion, we can afford a current expenditure of approximately €25 billion [Including social welfare], which is about half our current spend. It is as simple as that. We must look at our existing spent, eliminates waste, prioritize and keep cutting from the bottom up until we reduce expenditure to €25 billion. Failure to to do that means that we are living beyond our means and expecting the next generation to pay for our profligacy. This is unconscionable!

@ Chameleon

Since you are fond of quoting MK, this then from the same article must have escaped your attention

“To borrow so that senior civil servants like me can continue to enjoy salaries twice as much as our European counterparts makes no sense, macroeconomic or otherwise.”

MK’s contributions to the debate have been patriotic as much as extraordinary prescience.

@ JudgeJohnDeedes

Coveney did himself untold damage. People could hardly contain their rage, and to think, I thought he would have made a good leader. First out the door now! Mother of God what on earth was I thinking? Talk about a mask slipping, I nearly got out the pen and ink to tell him how deluded he is. Then again I called for the resignation of Mary Harney at least 100 times including hand delivered letters to the Dail. But wait and see who will have the last laugh this.

The cliche ridden comments in response to this piece reflects the spectacularly lazy, ill informed, dull, unimaginative mindset of our private sector.