The Con starts elsewwhere

Well this was a bad week to be Irish, No land of saints and scholars or cead Mile Failte for the inhabitants of The Emerald Isle. The past few days have seen the publication of a report by some high rolling economists aimed at reducing the ever spiralling cost of The Republic of Ireland. With borrowing estimated at € 1 million a day something has to be done and this report aimed to do it. The single biggest talking point in what amounts to be a list of cut backs is a proposal to cut social welfare payments by 5%. There is not a mention of 5% cut backs for those at the top. Judges in this country are paid up to € 290,000 a year and the vast majority of them are refusing to take any cut backs whatsoever. Many of the private and public sector workers have reluctantly accepted a 10% wage cut but not the judges, they are far too important and much too busy keeping out of touch with the real world to consider a wage cut. We have 166 members of parliament earning a fortune and almost half of them do nothing more than complain about The Government (something the rest of us do for free) and aside from their huge wages, they get expenses that make the average industrial wage seem paultry. Hospital consultants can expect € 500,000 a year from the state and senior civil servants can easily get half that for passing around or losing bits of paper.

If this Government really wants to save money they should put a cap of € 100,000 on wages paid to state workers and stop spending € 84,000 a year on prisoners. It would also be necessary to cut child benifit payments to anyone with an income in excess of € 75,000 and check out how many people are claiming single parents allowances while co habiting with the fathers of their children.

We are in a financial mess at the moment but as usual the well off high earners won't be affected, instead we have 166 highly paid TD's who haven't a clue how to get this country back on track. The new proposals also include shedding over 17,000 public sector jobs, does this mean that we have that many people doing nothing ? Of course not, the jobs willl be cut regardless, no consideration given to how services will be affected, just each department told to make cuts based on their overheads and nothing to do with their performances or value for money.

Are you listening Mr Cowen, oh how silly of me, of course you aren't !