When is an amazingly generous pay rise not a pay rise? Well, when the Taoiseach decides to defer it for a year. No, not reject it. No, not saying: lads, we are getting paid enough already, let's do this as an example. No, what they are doing is deferring the phase-in for one year. Not even a year. They'll get the whole lot but it will start being phased in in September 2008 rather than in January.
How generous of them.
True, it would have been a humiliating climbdown for The Anorak and his shower (actually that's not a bad way of describing the Cabinet) if they had simply turned it down.
But this fudge is meaningless. And I bet that when it is phased in it will be back-dated meaning that they'll get it all as if they got it now (all that will be deferred is actual payment).
Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern came out on the Plinth in front of Leinster House and used all the standard excuses for defending it (independent body; seven years etc.). He was totally unaware that the same body for higher remuneration had awarded Ministers an interim pay award of 7.5% two years ago and seemed to be rather hazy on the details of what pay rises Ministers have got in the past seven years.
It's amazing how quickly our political aristocracy has become divorced from the harsh reality faced by their serfs.
Showing posts with label pay rises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pay rises. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - BUDGET ONE
It's now just 3pm - 45 minutes away from the most difficult budget Brian Cowen will give.
The speculation that's flying along the correspondents' corridor at the moment. 1. A big move on stamp duty. 2. A bigger carbon budget that the conservative-minded Cowen will be prepared to openly admit. 3. More money for cancer services. And 4. Ministers may make a decision to waive their pay increase (even though Bertie Ahern said this would be a futile gesture).
I'm just not sure about no. 4. Journalists are as prone to being gullible to unfounded rumours (maybe even more so!) than anybody else.
Whatever, all will be revealed over the next two hours!
The speculation that's flying along the correspondents' corridor at the moment. 1. A big move on stamp duty. 2. A bigger carbon budget that the conservative-minded Cowen will be prepared to openly admit. 3. More money for cancer services. And 4. Ministers may make a decision to waive their pay increase (even though Bertie Ahern said this would be a futile gesture).
I'm just not sure about no. 4. Journalists are as prone to being gullible to unfounded rumours (maybe even more so!) than anybody else.
Whatever, all will be revealed over the next two hours!
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - PAY RISE
I thought it was only me banging on about the unconscionable pay rise paid to the State's top brass, who have now established themselves as fully-fledged members of the new 'landed classes'.
But it's what we call in the newspaper game as a story with legs. It just won't go away. Two Ministers came out and sounded windy about it at the weekend. And yesterday Bertie Ahern tried to put paid to the dispute with an amazing display of verbal gymnastics - it was all "smokes and daggers" he declared in a classic Bertieism.
But there's been a dishonesty to the way the Government has responded to the criticism. They say it's the first award in seven years. It isn't. An interim award worth7.5& was made two years ago. So the c 15% that Ahern and Cowen and all got was on top of 7.5% they got two years ago.
And the utterly misleading impression was given too that it was the first pay rise they have got in seven years. TDs and Ministers have got EVERY pay rise that's been going, all the national pay awards, benchmarking the lot.
Richard Bruton pointed out yesterday that Bertie Ahern's income has risen by 50% in the past four years (and as a point of fact, it has risen 133% since he came into office). And don't get me started on pensions. The pension bill for the public service is going to screw all other taxpayers by the middle of this century.
I was on Matt Cooper's The Last Word on Today FM with Richard Bruton of Fine Gael. Matt pressed Richard to say what an appropriate salary level for the Taoiseach should be. He refused to go there. But I'll posit a figure - €200,000 would be extremely generous and relatively non controversial.
And that figure should also apply to top civil servants, judiciary, the gardai and the lot. What's happened to the notion of public service? It's all about money nowadays. Greed is poisoning our society.
But it's what we call in the newspaper game as a story with legs. It just won't go away. Two Ministers came out and sounded windy about it at the weekend. And yesterday Bertie Ahern tried to put paid to the dispute with an amazing display of verbal gymnastics - it was all "smokes and daggers" he declared in a classic Bertieism.
But there's been a dishonesty to the way the Government has responded to the criticism. They say it's the first award in seven years. It isn't. An interim award worth7.5& was made two years ago. So the c 15% that Ahern and Cowen and all got was on top of 7.5% they got two years ago.
And the utterly misleading impression was given too that it was the first pay rise they have got in seven years. TDs and Ministers have got EVERY pay rise that's been going, all the national pay awards, benchmarking the lot.
Richard Bruton pointed out yesterday that Bertie Ahern's income has risen by 50% in the past four years (and as a point of fact, it has risen 133% since he came into office). And don't get me started on pensions. The pension bill for the public service is going to screw all other taxpayers by the middle of this century.
I was on Matt Cooper's The Last Word on Today FM with Richard Bruton of Fine Gael. Matt pressed Richard to say what an appropriate salary level for the Taoiseach should be. He refused to go there. But I'll posit a figure - €200,000 would be extremely generous and relatively non controversial.
And that figure should also apply to top civil servants, judiciary, the gardai and the lot. What's happened to the notion of public service? It's all about money nowadays. Greed is poisoning our society.
Monday, November 05, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - PAYBACK TIME
Is it going to be payback time, literally? Bertie Ahern doesn't want to forfeit the extra 38 grand. But a couple of Ministers have been sounding a little peevish and watery about getting another massive rake of cash on top of all the perks, money and extras they have got over recent years.
And it's not just the politicians. It's the entire top brass.Secretaries General (Grade 1) of Government Department will all be getting €303,000, as will Supreme Court Judges, CEOs of semi states, with a whole second tier of judges, technocrats, Semi State bods, university heads getting humongous wage levels. The plain truth is that we are more prosperous now but STILL a small country, and such largess is unjustified. An independent body it may technically be but it is composed mostly of very wealthy people from the private sector - there is one workers' representative from the Labour Court. For them big six figure salaries are (excuse the mixed metaphor) ten a penny.
And what's galling is that they are all entitled to gold-plated pensions that are inured to the winds of change. And secretary generals will also be entitled to bonuses up to 20% of their salaries for 'exceptional' performance, whatever that is. And will they get docked pay for making a blunder or for under-perforimg? Umm, I thing we have a negative on that one!
Eamon Ryan didn't do well this morning under a fusillade of questions from Cathal Mac Coille on Morning Ireland (hear the interview here). And the rumour is that the Cabinet is now going to indulge in a bit of tokenism and defer the pay rise for a couple of months, and then reintroduce it when the furore has died down.
Sadly, I wouldn't expect any of the opposition parties to do any better. The greed at the top reflects wider society. Who's going to protest about it? No politician will, that's for sure! Who else? The vested interests involved are the most powerful in the country! Who has the will and the wherewithal to do it? Anybody who has is going to be way outside the golden circle.
There are sectors in Irish society where salaries are vastly inflated. Executive pay in business is crass. Barristers and consultants at the top of their professions command obscene fees that are grotesquely out of proportion with Ireland's size and position in the world (for reference, return to home truth speech made by the German Ambassador to Ireland). And no matter how consultants try to dress it up, one of their number did described a €200,000 plus salary as "Mickey Mouse money".
I'll just finish by quoting two paragraphs from Polly Toynbee's excellent column in the Guardian last Tuesday on pay profligacy (being Toynbee, they are two very long paragraphs!.
The selfsame argument can be made in Ireland.
And it's not just the politicians. It's the entire top brass.Secretaries General (Grade 1) of Government Department will all be getting €303,000, as will Supreme Court Judges, CEOs of semi states, with a whole second tier of judges, technocrats, Semi State bods, university heads getting humongous wage levels. The plain truth is that we are more prosperous now but STILL a small country, and such largess is unjustified. An independent body it may technically be but it is composed mostly of very wealthy people from the private sector - there is one workers' representative from the Labour Court. For them big six figure salaries are (excuse the mixed metaphor) ten a penny.
And what's galling is that they are all entitled to gold-plated pensions that are inured to the winds of change. And secretary generals will also be entitled to bonuses up to 20% of their salaries for 'exceptional' performance, whatever that is. And will they get docked pay for making a blunder or for under-perforimg? Umm, I thing we have a negative on that one!
Eamon Ryan didn't do well this morning under a fusillade of questions from Cathal Mac Coille on Morning Ireland (hear the interview here). And the rumour is that the Cabinet is now going to indulge in a bit of tokenism and defer the pay rise for a couple of months, and then reintroduce it when the furore has died down.
Sadly, I wouldn't expect any of the opposition parties to do any better. The greed at the top reflects wider society. Who's going to protest about it? No politician will, that's for sure! Who else? The vested interests involved are the most powerful in the country! Who has the will and the wherewithal to do it? Anybody who has is going to be way outside the golden circle.
There are sectors in Irish society where salaries are vastly inflated. Executive pay in business is crass. Barristers and consultants at the top of their professions command obscene fees that are grotesquely out of proportion with Ireland's size and position in the world (for reference, return to home truth speech made by the German Ambassador to Ireland). And no matter how consultants try to dress it up, one of their number did described a €200,000 plus salary as "Mickey Mouse money".
I'll just finish by quoting two paragraphs from Polly Toynbee's excellent column in the Guardian last Tuesday on pay profligacy (being Toynbee, they are two very long paragraphs!.
Out of control top pay in the private sector should matter to the Treasury because it infects the public sector. Why is the cabinet secretary now paid considerably more (£220,000) than the prime minister (£187,000)? It's a plum prestige job that needs no bribery, and leads to rich jobs afterwards. Does the chief executive of Bradford need more than the PM? Bringing private sector people in now infects public pay scales, as lower ranking arrivals on £300,000 report to permanent secretaries on £170,000. (However there is plainly a rare genuine market for head of the nuclear decommissioning authority: no one applied for this toxic chalice at £80,000 so it's now been advertised at £200,000). But being director general of the BBC is not toxic: everyone wants it, so why pay a total package of £788,000 - let alone cabinet minister rates for scores of middling BBC managers? (And couldn't they take a pay cut in sympathy with those about to lose their jobs?) Sir John Bourn's downfall is a classic example of how private excess makes public people lose their financial bearings.
For Labour to refuse to give any leadership on this is an incomprehensible lacuna: the national psychology of pay affects everyone. Yesterday the government set up a new child poverty unit: Ed Balls and Peter Hain, the two ministers involved, know their 2010 half-way mark to abolishing child poverty will be missed by miles on its present trajectory. Barnardo's are joining in - but their director, Martin Narey, wonders what they can do with no extra money. Only 48p a week extra went to child tax credits this year, subsidising low-paid jobs. The bigger question is this: how can Labour ever abolish child poverty if they dare not face down the underlying forces fracturing pay scales all the way through and accelerating the country into ever greater inequality?
The selfsame argument can be made in Ireland.
Saturday, November 03, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - THAT OPINION POLL
The latest opinion poll tells us that Fianna Fail is on the way out and if we are patient enough to wait out the other 1,500 days between now and the next General Election, we can collectively wave them goodbye.
In one sense, the findings of the TNS mrbi opionion poll are meaningless in the greater scheme of things. We're all still descending to base camp after the tough high altitude exertions of the elecyion – it will be next year before we will see the ambition expeditions towards the next electoral Everest begin.
But having said that, the result is very illustrative of the internal dynamics within Fianna Fail and the party's complacency and mediocrity since the Summer.
Since forging its very cute and very clever deal with the Greens, the PDs and the four independent TDs, Fianna Fail's leadership has spent the last couple of months doing what it's become good at (making sure that it feathers its own
nest) and doing what it's become bad at (looking after the rest of us).
It has to be said that the timing of this poll could not have been worse for Fianna Fail. The sampling was taken in the immediate wake of the cringe- inducing reverse over provisional driving licences and a couple of days after they accepted Biblical pay hikes for themselves and the top brass of the civil service, universities, local authorities, army, gardai and the judiciary.
It also came a week after another farce, the Department of Transport report about who knew what about Shannon losing its Heathrow slots and why Noel Dempsey was the last to find out. And On top of all that, Bertie Ahern's remarkable filmic tale at the Mahon Tribunal encompassing amnesia and his experience with international money markets was still fresh
enough in some people's minds to be reflected in this poll.
There's no doubt about it, it's a stinker of a poll for Fianna Fail and for Ahern himself.
When it comes to pinpoint accuracy, opinion polls have the same record as the Limerick hurling team in the All Ireland final. The three per cent margin of error, plus or minus, is too often ignored by the media. So a party showing 12 per cent could be on 9, and equally could be on 15. So
they're not good at picking up small shifts in support for smaller parties.
The corollary of this is that polls are good at reflecting large shifts of support (ie outside the margin of error) for the larger parties. And so we can take it that nobody in Fianna Fail can quibble with its monumental nine per cent drop in support.
Nor can Bertie Ahern. His stock has fallen dramatically. What is unclear is whether this is a one-off (an immediate reaction to a dismal week for FF) or whether the Teflon coating on his Anorak is finally beginning to wear thin. My own
inclination is that that massive pedestal on which we put this remarkable political animal is finally beginning to totter and topple.
A couple of people said to me: what difference does it make? Sure, won't he be hanging up the Anorak at the next election? It makes a big difference. Ahern wants to stay on until he decides to go. And he has given no indication so far it's going to be earlier than 2011, even though most others within FF are thinking of 2009 (and before the European and local
elections).
So, if the figures for FF continue to slump at its core support figure of the low thirties and if Ahern's own popularity fails to recover, you will begin to hear sounds from the FF committee rooms not heard for many a year – the nervous shuffling
of feet and the sharpening of long knives.
A lot of FFers believe that the Irish Times is out to get them. Their paranoia won't be alleviated by the inclusion of Tánaiste Brian Cowen among the leaders for the first time.
One of their backroom people told me Thursday night that he believed Cowen was included deliberately to make Ahern look bad. I think the reason for his inclusion was simpler – he is, after all, the anointed one.
But his popular showing of 49% compared to 43% for his leader will have a ripple effect within FF – and may see some of Cowen's supporters (who are more impatient for
the big prize than he is) begin to make subtle moves nudging him in that direction.
I'd love to think that the poll was a reaction to the disgraceful pay rises the top brass got last week. It wasn't solely that. People expect politicians to do that – that storm was only a one day blow. I really believe the pay rises to politicians, higher civil servants, and other high-ranking state employees was an affront to democracy. Ahern said there was no review in seven years. In fact the body awarded an interim increase of 7.5% two years ago. And Ministers and
TDs like Ahern, Cowen and company have benefited from every single national award and benchmarking award over the past seven years. And the body is independent but for most of its world-of- business membership, big six figure
salaries are par for the course.
Have politicians made one personal sacrifice over the past decade? No. The new class that has grown up to run our
State and its institutions has become self-perpetuating - looking after its own interests first and foremost.
In one sense, the findings of the TNS mrbi opionion poll are meaningless in the greater scheme of things. We're all still descending to base camp after the tough high altitude exertions of the elecyion – it will be next year before we will see the ambition expeditions towards the next electoral Everest begin.
But having said that, the result is very illustrative of the internal dynamics within Fianna Fail and the party's complacency and mediocrity since the Summer.
Since forging its very cute and very clever deal with the Greens, the PDs and the four independent TDs, Fianna Fail's leadership has spent the last couple of months doing what it's become good at (making sure that it feathers its own
nest) and doing what it's become bad at (looking after the rest of us).
It has to be said that the timing of this poll could not have been worse for Fianna Fail. The sampling was taken in the immediate wake of the cringe- inducing reverse over provisional driving licences and a couple of days after they accepted Biblical pay hikes for themselves and the top brass of the civil service, universities, local authorities, army, gardai and the judiciary.
It also came a week after another farce, the Department of Transport report about who knew what about Shannon losing its Heathrow slots and why Noel Dempsey was the last to find out. And On top of all that, Bertie Ahern's remarkable filmic tale at the Mahon Tribunal encompassing amnesia and his experience with international money markets was still fresh
enough in some people's minds to be reflected in this poll.
There's no doubt about it, it's a stinker of a poll for Fianna Fail and for Ahern himself.
When it comes to pinpoint accuracy, opinion polls have the same record as the Limerick hurling team in the All Ireland final. The three per cent margin of error, plus or minus, is too often ignored by the media. So a party showing 12 per cent could be on 9, and equally could be on 15. So
they're not good at picking up small shifts in support for smaller parties.
The corollary of this is that polls are good at reflecting large shifts of support (ie outside the margin of error) for the larger parties. And so we can take it that nobody in Fianna Fail can quibble with its monumental nine per cent drop in support.
Nor can Bertie Ahern. His stock has fallen dramatically. What is unclear is whether this is a one-off (an immediate reaction to a dismal week for FF) or whether the Teflon coating on his Anorak is finally beginning to wear thin. My own
inclination is that that massive pedestal on which we put this remarkable political animal is finally beginning to totter and topple.
A couple of people said to me: what difference does it make? Sure, won't he be hanging up the Anorak at the next election? It makes a big difference. Ahern wants to stay on until he decides to go. And he has given no indication so far it's going to be earlier than 2011, even though most others within FF are thinking of 2009 (and before the European and local
elections).
So, if the figures for FF continue to slump at its core support figure of the low thirties and if Ahern's own popularity fails to recover, you will begin to hear sounds from the FF committee rooms not heard for many a year – the nervous shuffling
of feet and the sharpening of long knives.
A lot of FFers believe that the Irish Times is out to get them. Their paranoia won't be alleviated by the inclusion of Tánaiste Brian Cowen among the leaders for the first time.
One of their backroom people told me Thursday night that he believed Cowen was included deliberately to make Ahern look bad. I think the reason for his inclusion was simpler – he is, after all, the anointed one.
But his popular showing of 49% compared to 43% for his leader will have a ripple effect within FF – and may see some of Cowen's supporters (who are more impatient for
the big prize than he is) begin to make subtle moves nudging him in that direction.
I'd love to think that the poll was a reaction to the disgraceful pay rises the top brass got last week. It wasn't solely that. People expect politicians to do that – that storm was only a one day blow. I really believe the pay rises to politicians, higher civil servants, and other high-ranking state employees was an affront to democracy. Ahern said there was no review in seven years. In fact the body awarded an interim increase of 7.5% two years ago. And Ministers and
TDs like Ahern, Cowen and company have benefited from every single national award and benchmarking award over the past seven years. And the body is independent but for most of its world-of- business membership, big six figure
salaries are par for the course.
Have politicians made one personal sacrifice over the past decade? No. The new class that has grown up to run our
State and its institutions has become self-perpetuating - looking after its own interests first and foremost.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
INSIDE POLITCS - GREED IS GOOD FOR BERTIE AND CO
Below is my Irish Examiner column from this morning. As you can guess, I'm utterly outraged at the generous pay rises awarded to Ministers, judges, Garda and army top brass, and civil servants. Bertie Ahern was interviewed yesterday and was implacable and 100% unapologetic.
He threw in a couple of red herrings about the White House and Chequers but he's the leader of a country of 4 million people, not of 250 million or 60 million. At least he's not yet as bad as the leadership in Singapore ($3.1 million annual salary) but almost as bad. The greed of our politicians - and their lust for money - is breath-taking.
People shouldn't accept this. Somebody should take a stand against this naked money-grabbing.
Incidentally, Stephen Collins over in the Irish Times wasn't too happy about it either. You can see his column here (subscription). He extends the argument to talk about the unbelievably generous pay and pension and expenses packages that all politicians get.
There's no other way to describe it: it's a disgrace.
Anyway, here is the column:
It hasn’t been a bad week for Government. This Government just doesn’t have bad weeks.
They can be caught in the act, bang-to-rights, up to their neck in it, red-handed, with all their fingers stuffed into the cookie jar.
The first thing that happens in such a situation is they forgive themselves.
The second thing that happens is the public forgives them, gives them general absolution every five years.
And so this hasn’t been a bad week for Government. Nor for the permanent Government (the civil service). But it’s been a very bad week for politics.
Ten days ago Tánaiste and Finance Minister Brian Cowen held a pre-Budget briefing in Government Buildings where he gave an updated version of Haughey’s famous 1980 speech that ‘we were living beyond our means’.
Ok, it’s not that dramatic or that dire yet. But Cowen intoned in dull serious tones: “It is clear from this scenario that the position is very tight. Given this position
I will focus on ensuring a sustainable financial position as we move into the future.”
Yep tight. Those middle and low-ranking civil servants would have to trim their sails when it came to benchmarking, he warned. And on departmental spending, he boldly declared that there would be no “double digit increases” this year.
Except for himself and for Bertie Ahern. Double digit increases are the order of the day too for all their Cabinet colleagues. Cowen gets a 15% increase that brings his salary up to E270,000. And his boss gets an incredible E38,000 increase to make him just about the highest paid political leader in Europe. It’s enough to allow him – like an Arab Sheikh –have bespoke anoraks with gold thread.
And the standard excuse. It was an independent review body. Yea, sure. I’ll guarantee you one thing. The review body is never ever going to recommend a pay cut.
It has a grand sounding title – Review Body on Higher Remuneraton – but it is no judge and jury. This is a body that is given riding instructions and terms of reference and will come to the task with its own preconceived ideas.
And it benchmarks public servants and politicians against private business. There is one major difference. Civil servants don’t get the heave-ho if they underperform or don’t reach targets.
And why aren’t our politicians benchmarked against other politicians in Europe, and not against entrepeneurs and executives involved in the cut and thrust of business?
If they want private sector salaries let them go into the private sector. Public service, serving the people, should not be about the money. Some might have taken exception to the candid home truths expressed by the German ambassador. But I and a lot of other people believed he was spot on? Is Ahern worth more than Gordon Brown? Is he worth more than Angela Merkel? Is he worth more than Nicolas Sarkozy. No, no, and no. But this Government, and especially the politician at its head, are obsessed with money and wealth.
This might surprise you but the Cabinet this week adopted the recommendations of the review body. That was big of them.
Now that might seem like the bitter word but there is an important principle at stake here. Our over-represented and over-paid political class have always had a knack of being insulated from the cold winds of hardship to which the rest of us are periodically exposed. The cardinal principle of politics in Ireland is to feather your own nest first before turning your attention to others.
And that extends to the civil service too, where senior officials got another grand hike in pay this week. And the quid pro quo? A lot of over nebulous performance indicators.
And there is no better example than this of the debacle over the Shannon Heathrow slots. On foot of records released to the Irish Examiner under an FOI request it emerged that senior officials in the Department of Transport were aware as early as June that Shannon’s Heathrow slots were vulnerable but failed to inform the Minister.
The Minister than got the top civil servant in Transport Julie O’Neill to draw up a report.
Gobsmacked is a pretty tame description of our reaction on Thursday night when we all found out that the star of Julie O’Neill’s report was Julie O’Neill herself.
When the famous ‘Memo for the Minister’s Information’ surfaced a couple of weeks ago on foot of the Irish Examiner’s FOI request, neither she nor John Murphy could remember the memo or any of the events surrounding the memo.
But then when they began to retrieve emails – including deleted ones – it emerged that John Murphy had sent her versions of that very email not once but twice on June 14. And that on foot of the second email she had contacted John Sharman, the chairman of Aer Lingus, such was the urgency of the situation.
Seemingly, the Secretary General says that Sharman’s reassurance was such that the Shannon slots were put on the back burner, So reassuring that a collective amnesia overtook the whole Department as if the possibility of Shannon losing its slots had never arisen. And then like a bolt out of the blue it happened. It was Julie O’Neill’s Bertie-esque moment.
Noel Dempsey is a politician for whom I have a lot of admiration. But his bland Pontius Pilate comments that they had apologised and we should all move on isn’t good enough. We were here before with nursing home charges.
Why were recommendations of the Travers report ignored by senior civil servants in Transport? Why were key conversations on matters of political sensitivity not noted down in writing? Why was the DAA desperate enough about the situation to be looking at ways of incentivising Aer Lingus to keep at least one slot in Shannon on June 14? And why was it all suddenly dropped the very next day on June 15? What exactly did John Sharman say to Julie O’Neill? And how could she and John Murphy recall nothing four months later of the flurry of emails, memos and phone calls made on June 14?
The only way the Minister can move this on is by granting a full and frank independent report.
He threw in a couple of red herrings about the White House and Chequers but he's the leader of a country of 4 million people, not of 250 million or 60 million. At least he's not yet as bad as the leadership in Singapore ($3.1 million annual salary) but almost as bad. The greed of our politicians - and their lust for money - is breath-taking.
People shouldn't accept this. Somebody should take a stand against this naked money-grabbing.
Incidentally, Stephen Collins over in the Irish Times wasn't too happy about it either. You can see his column here (subscription). He extends the argument to talk about the unbelievably generous pay and pension and expenses packages that all politicians get.
There's no other way to describe it: it's a disgrace.
Anyway, here is the column:
It hasn’t been a bad week for Government. This Government just doesn’t have bad weeks.
They can be caught in the act, bang-to-rights, up to their neck in it, red-handed, with all their fingers stuffed into the cookie jar.
The first thing that happens in such a situation is they forgive themselves.
The second thing that happens is the public forgives them, gives them general absolution every five years.
And so this hasn’t been a bad week for Government. Nor for the permanent Government (the civil service). But it’s been a very bad week for politics.
Ten days ago Tánaiste and Finance Minister Brian Cowen held a pre-Budget briefing in Government Buildings where he gave an updated version of Haughey’s famous 1980 speech that ‘we were living beyond our means’.
Ok, it’s not that dramatic or that dire yet. But Cowen intoned in dull serious tones: “It is clear from this scenario that the position is very tight. Given this position
I will focus on ensuring a sustainable financial position as we move into the future.”
Yep tight. Those middle and low-ranking civil servants would have to trim their sails when it came to benchmarking, he warned. And on departmental spending, he boldly declared that there would be no “double digit increases” this year.
Except for himself and for Bertie Ahern. Double digit increases are the order of the day too for all their Cabinet colleagues. Cowen gets a 15% increase that brings his salary up to E270,000. And his boss gets an incredible E38,000 increase to make him just about the highest paid political leader in Europe. It’s enough to allow him – like an Arab Sheikh –have bespoke anoraks with gold thread.
And the standard excuse. It was an independent review body. Yea, sure. I’ll guarantee you one thing. The review body is never ever going to recommend a pay cut.
It has a grand sounding title – Review Body on Higher Remuneraton – but it is no judge and jury. This is a body that is given riding instructions and terms of reference and will come to the task with its own preconceived ideas.
And it benchmarks public servants and politicians against private business. There is one major difference. Civil servants don’t get the heave-ho if they underperform or don’t reach targets.
And why aren’t our politicians benchmarked against other politicians in Europe, and not against entrepeneurs and executives involved in the cut and thrust of business?
If they want private sector salaries let them go into the private sector. Public service, serving the people, should not be about the money. Some might have taken exception to the candid home truths expressed by the German ambassador. But I and a lot of other people believed he was spot on? Is Ahern worth more than Gordon Brown? Is he worth more than Angela Merkel? Is he worth more than Nicolas Sarkozy. No, no, and no. But this Government, and especially the politician at its head, are obsessed with money and wealth.
This might surprise you but the Cabinet this week adopted the recommendations of the review body. That was big of them.
Now that might seem like the bitter word but there is an important principle at stake here. Our over-represented and over-paid political class have always had a knack of being insulated from the cold winds of hardship to which the rest of us are periodically exposed. The cardinal principle of politics in Ireland is to feather your own nest first before turning your attention to others.
And that extends to the civil service too, where senior officials got another grand hike in pay this week. And the quid pro quo? A lot of over nebulous performance indicators.
And there is no better example than this of the debacle over the Shannon Heathrow slots. On foot of records released to the Irish Examiner under an FOI request it emerged that senior officials in the Department of Transport were aware as early as June that Shannon’s Heathrow slots were vulnerable but failed to inform the Minister.
The Minister than got the top civil servant in Transport Julie O’Neill to draw up a report.
Gobsmacked is a pretty tame description of our reaction on Thursday night when we all found out that the star of Julie O’Neill’s report was Julie O’Neill herself.
When the famous ‘Memo for the Minister’s Information’ surfaced a couple of weeks ago on foot of the Irish Examiner’s FOI request, neither she nor John Murphy could remember the memo or any of the events surrounding the memo.
But then when they began to retrieve emails – including deleted ones – it emerged that John Murphy had sent her versions of that very email not once but twice on June 14. And that on foot of the second email she had contacted John Sharman, the chairman of Aer Lingus, such was the urgency of the situation.
Seemingly, the Secretary General says that Sharman’s reassurance was such that the Shannon slots were put on the back burner, So reassuring that a collective amnesia overtook the whole Department as if the possibility of Shannon losing its slots had never arisen. And then like a bolt out of the blue it happened. It was Julie O’Neill’s Bertie-esque moment.
Noel Dempsey is a politician for whom I have a lot of admiration. But his bland Pontius Pilate comments that they had apologised and we should all move on isn’t good enough. We were here before with nursing home charges.
Why were recommendations of the Travers report ignored by senior civil servants in Transport? Why were key conversations on matters of political sensitivity not noted down in writing? Why was the DAA desperate enough about the situation to be looking at ways of incentivising Aer Lingus to keep at least one slot in Shannon on June 14? And why was it all suddenly dropped the very next day on June 15? What exactly did John Sharman say to Julie O’Neill? And how could she and John Murphy recall nothing four months later of the flurry of emails, memos and phone calls made on June 14?
The only way the Minister can move this on is by granting a full and frank independent report.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
