Public sector wages are ‘elephant in room’
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BOTH Fianna Fail and the Green Party stood accused of political cowardice last night for failing to tackle the spiralling cost of public sector pay in the newly agreed Programme for Government.
Consumer advocate Eddie Hobbs led the charge, slamming both the coalition parties for ignoring the issue which he described as the "elephant in the room".
Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Mr Hobbs said: "Where in the negotiations was there anything about public sector pay cuts? That is the single thing separating us from getting a huge increase in our international borrowing costs. If they (the Government) flunk that in December, we're all economic history. The key thing is that all politicians at the moment, including the opposition are displaying a huge amount of political cowardice. The elephant in the room here is public sector pay. It's left to people like me and journalists in your newspaper to take the heat on it. Name one politician on either side who says the rates of pay in the public sector are far too high.
"That's the key issue. The rest of the stuff is pretty much irrelevant." Mr Hobbs added: "I regard it (the Programme for Government) all as political window dressing. There's no politician at the moment showing any sense of courage about the fact that we have to take the public sector pay levels down. And it's not just in Government. It's in the opposition parties too. They're all afraid of the public sector."
Meanwhile, a senior government source dismissed the newly agreed programme as little more than a 'fig leaf' for the Green ministers to bring before their members in a bid to hold the embattled Coalition together. "The Government never said it was going to introduce third-level fees. According to the report that was done on fees, basically what we were proposing was the British system where they give the student a loan and if they are earning more than 'x' at some time in the indeterminate future they have to pay back a certain amount.
"That wouldn't have gone through the Cabinet anyway, for the simple reason that the return for the proposal wouldn't have started coming in for about seven or eight years and it would have been costing the Government money in the short term which is the last thing we can afford," the source said.
Contacted by the Sunday Independent, the author of the Bord Snip Nua Report, economist Colm McCarthy refused to be drawn on the Government's proposals to maintain free third-level education, or any of the other measures which are set to cost the taxpayer dearly. "I'm not going to say anything about this. We wrote a report. It's over to the Cabinet to decide what's to be done, so I'm not going to offer any observations," Mr McCarthy said.
A source close to the committee chaired by Mr McCarthy expressed incredulity, however, on the education proposals saying: "If you rule out cuts in certain areas, it only puts more pressure on the remaining areas. I think that's a point that has to be made. The three big votes are education, health, and social welfare. They account for 75 per cent of government spending, so if you start saying I'm not going to touch one of those three, then you simply put more pressure on the others."
Fianna Fail TD and former minister for state John McGuinness questioned the commitment given by the Government to continue to provide free third-level education. "My reaction to the education side of it is, yes fine, it fixes a particular problem for today but you have to look at funding that and where that funding is going to come from.
"I have to read through the finer print of the proposals to see where things are either going to be cut back, or where the money is going to come from in relation to education."
- RONALD QUINLAN
Originally published in
