Madam, - The 36,000 cut in the number of public servants proposed by Tony O'Brien of private financial consultants Grant Thornton in your pages today (October 22nd) would devastate public services and massively reduce their availability to individuals and communities, especially the most vulnerable.
Like others who call for drastic cuts in public services, Mr O'Brien offers no evidence of widespread overstaffing. He mentions substantial staffing increases in health and education in recent years, but fails to mention that a recent OECD review of Ireland's public service put these down to our "playing catch up" (their words, not mine) from historically low levels of public service spending and staffing. Mr O'Brien himself notes that staffing has increased at a faster rate in the private sector (45 per cent) than in the public service (30 per cent) since 1995.
The OECD report - which is mysteriously absent from the increasingly hysterical public discourse on this subject - found that Ireland spends proportionately less on its public services, and employs proportionately fewer staff, than do other OECD countries. This from an international body that traditionally supports "free market" solutions and slimmed-down public services.
Regardless of what financial consultants believe in theory, in the real world staff reductions hurt service users. Where cuts are currently happening - for example in parts of the HSE - it has meant ward closures, longer waiting lists and the withdrawal of services. In areas where it is being proposed - for example the increase in teacher-pupil ratios - it is causing uproar because parents know their children will suffer.
I have no doubt that there are areas where efficiency and value for money could be improved, or where staff could be redeployed to meet new priorities or improve services.
But let's stop pretending that you can make deep cuts to a public service workforce, which is already small by international standards, without damaging services. It's time those who advocate cuts in public service staffing - financial consultants, politicians, senior public service managers and business federations alike - were challenged to say specifically what services are surplus to requirement. So far they been unwilling or unable to do so. Perhaps this isn't so surprising; the HSE itself has been advocating 1,000 redundancies for over a year but has yet to specifically identify where these "unnecessary" posts exist. - Yours, etc,
PETER McLOONE,
Chair, ICTU Public Services Committee,
ICTU,
Dublin 1.