Austerity – with exceptions

by Grainne

The outcome of the public consultation undertaken last year by the Minister for Public Enterprise Brendan Howlin on how the State can save money makes for interesting reading. 

Its seems that public servants were major contributors to the exercise, suggesting ways money could be saved by having their allegedly more work-shy colleagues accountable by linking pay increments to performance assessments.

It wasn’t surprising that many of the suggestions related to cutting spending in social welfare. While there is undoubtedly a case to be made for investigating welfare fraud and cutting off people who are illegally receiving benefits, such widespread condemnation of the system must be galling for the thousands of newly unemployed people who, if given the choice, would prefer to have their jobs back than be on the greatly reduced rates of income the State pays them to get by. Last year, for a period between April and June I found myself unemployed. I spent 12 hour days submitting my CV to companies across Ireland for a variety of jobs, many requiring a lot less experience and expertise than I had. I would have done anything to return to work. Before receiving any payment, which took several weeks, I had to furnish the Department of Social Protection with a large amount of paperwork and two forms of photographic ID, my passport and driving licence. Four weeks after payment began I received a letter from them, telling me to present myself at my nearest FAS office to see what assistance may be available to me in finding work. Failure to turn up, I was warned, could result in my payment being stopped. I was incensed. 64 job applications, six interviews and three fulltime and one partime job offer later, I took the best of the bunch and thankfully returned to the workforce. Not everyone is as lucky.

Of all of the submissions made, I wonder if anyone suggested a ban on Government Ministers refurbishing their offices as Brendan Howlin himself did shortly after taking over as Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform last year. As Aine wrote on this website at the time, the man charged with reducing Government spending had over €47,000 spent on setting up his offices, including €47 for a sign for his toilet door and the same amount for a key for that door. He also spent money having his desk raised. He wasn’t the only Minister who had money spent on refurbishment and/or changes to their offices but it was ironic in his case given that in December’s budget he was announcing €1.4bn cuts in day-to-day expenditure and a €755M reduction in capital spending. “As unpalatable as it might be, we must make some difficult choices in order to contribute to the reduction of the budget deficit” he commented, sanctimoniously.

Here’s a suggestion that I should have probably submitted at the time. That the practice of allowing judges, politicians and others who have the cost of being transported to and from work paid for by the taxpayer be stopped immediately. Likewise with meal allowances for these people. The working public is expected to get to their jobs and home again on a daily basis under their own steam at their own cost. Similarly, they are expected to provide food for themselves from their own funds. It’s a joke to have politicians, judges and high ranking civil servants, who have far more generous pay packets than the average PAYE worker, getting such free perks. Except that no-one’s laughing.

Tags: allowances., austerity, cost cutting measures, cutting our cloth, hairshirt time, politicians, public consultation, Saving the State money

This entry was posted on January 20th, 2012 and is filed under Blog, Consumer, Discussion & debate, Family life, Service, Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.