Sir, – The subject of the disgracefully headlined article “Croke Park deal an obstacle to job creation” (Dan O’Brien, Business This Week, March 2nd), is the Pathways to Work scheme being introduced by the Department of Social Protection. Ironically, this scheme is an excellent illustration of the value to the taxpayer that the Croke Park Agreement provides. Nearly 2,000 staff have been transferred from Fás and the HSE to the department under the agreement’s terms, in order that an integrated department can provide welfare, training and activation for those who have lost their jobs.
Mr O’Brien acknowledges this approach should modernise the experience for jobseekers and make it more like the “well-designed systems of northern Europe”. Indeed, we all hope he is correct. What he overlooks is that the transfer of the necessary staff was made possible by the very agreement that, quite inexplicably and in contrast to the otherwise analytical perspective of the article, he chooses to denigrate with derogatory and inflammatory language such as “cossets”. This language says more about the decline of serious media analysis in this country than it does about the thousands of hard-working staff in a department that, despite being hit with an avalanche of new claimants in recent years, still manages to pay over a million people every week and is now seeking to extend and improve its services to the 450,000 of our fellow citizens who find themselves without work.
Mr O’Brien seems to be disturbingly fixated on the fact that the department is considering if/how the private sector might be able to assist in its work. For some inexplicable reason, he takes this fact as a base point to work himself into a froth about an agreement that actually provides flexibility in changing the way in which services are delivered if, and this is vital, it can be established clearly that such change brings value. Why the fact that a Government department should take time to reflect on how taxpayers’ money might best be spent before acting should cause apoplexy is a mystery to me.
On a more general note, the headline that accompanied the article goes beyond mere overstatement. The “Croke Park Agreement” is an essential part of the economic recovery that this State needs if we are to have the necessary level of job creation.
It is an agreement that will deliver €3.5 billion in savings to the Exchequer while the State’s employees will co-operate with all of the necessary re-configurations of our public service to minimise disruption in the delivery of services to our citizens. It provides stability, while addressing the crisis in our public finances through the delivery of the most breath-taking and far-reaching productivity agreement that this State has ever seen. The accurate headline would be, “Croke Park essential for job creation”, but I will not be holding my breath for that to appear in any organ of our media. – Yours, etc,