Madam, – Please tell me that I’ve got this wrong.
Things go awry for the property speculators and they now owe millions to the banks. The people who are on benefit, the PAYE workers and children are going to pay off the debt.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – In framing the emergency Budget, the Government has decided in this hour of grave economic need to squander the opportunity to start the process of reforming the public service and addressing its out-of-control payroll costs.
By any measure, our public service payroll costs are unsustainable. The public sector wage bill grew from €10 billion to €19 billion between 2001 and 2008. So-called benchmarking has done significant boom-fuelling damage to this economy and the cost of public sector pensions is a burden that must be addressed in a serious way, not the token effort of the pension levy.
Put simply, benchmarking should be a downward as well as an upward process.
The expenditure side of the fiscal equation should have carried the burden in 2009. The Government should have dragged the public sector payroll bill back to its 2003-4 level and it should have identified significant efficiency targets across the public service.
And yes, we all know that a small number of wealthy people have done damage to the economy and they should pay the full price for it. But the core issue to be tackled most urgently is the cost of the public service which happily enjoyed many of the fruits of the private sector boom over the past eight years.
Arguments such as “we didn’t cause the crisis” are futile. We need expenditure reform urgently – have another go at it, Minister.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – As an Irish ex-pat living in the US, I am appalled by the Budget.
By refusing to reduce spending, the Government opted for what I can only say is unimaginative, anti-innovation, anti-growth, but pro status-quo agenda. I had high hopes for a budget that would look to those in Ireland who have the motivation to stand up for themselves and not expect the Government to help them. The days of multinationals coming to Ireland to spur the next boom are gone. Get over it. Consider this a missed opportunity to provide stimulus to those who have the drive to build something for themselves.
Regretfully, I believe it will trigger a highly undesirable brain drain – both for those in Ireland who wish to succeed and those who wish not be held back by others. From my position, as someone who is looking to build and potentially one day invest in Ireland, prospects look grim.
I cannot imagine going back to raise my family with these policies in place.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – Brian Lenihan had the ability to introduce all the increased levies from May 1st. He has, however, thrown the review of politicians’ pay to a committee – which will eventually issue a report.
May I suggest that with effect from May 1st he should align politicians’ pay with the Dutch system pending the arrival of the report?
The Netherlands is close to Ireland, has a similar standard and cost of living (but a much larger population) and I understand that the Dutch prime minister is paid a maximum of €171,000. Furthermore, no state employee is permitted to earn more than this amount. I cannot estimate the savings that would result from such a system – but I suspect that the levies that were imposed in the Budget could be reduced by at least 1 per cent, or better still, the recovery could be accelerated.
Before politicians and State employees trot out the old adage “if you pay peanuts you get monkeys”, may I point out that the Dutch economy, health service and public services are in rude health. Perhaps the Dutch monkeys are wiser and more efficient than our Irish fat cats. (I do not intend to offend monkeys, cats or the Dutch people.)
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – While there has been understandable public anger at the cuts in social welfare and tax rises in the Budget, we must realise that these cuts are just a smokescreen to disguise the €90 billion bailout for the so-called diamond circle of banks, property speculators and developers who destroyed this great country with the collusion of the current Government.
Every person in the State, from the single parent on welfare who is going to lose a much-needed Christmas bonus, to hardworking nurses, firemen and middle management in the private sector are not only being surcharged for the home-grown economic collapse, but this very act is being used to cover up the enormously risky policy of taking into State control €90 billion of toxic debts.
This follows last year’s surcharges, the €7 billion injection into the banks and the nationalisation of the so-called developers’ bank – Anglo-Irish. The new diamond circle of bankers, developers and the like has been handed a €90 billion State cheque this week notwithstanding all the usual comments about “safeguards”.
– Yours etc,
GERRY CREECHAN, Raglan Lane, Dublin 4.
Madam, – If child benefit payments are to be means-tested, very careful consideration should be given to the threshold beyond which the payment is withheld. Ireland’s young demographics have often been quoted as a vital asset, and would become so again in the event of an economic recovery.
Ireland’s birth rate is hovering just below the rate of replacement however, so any significant reduction in births would have a major impact when current workers would be retiring. Other countries have seen birth rates fall below an average of 1.25 children per female.
Another reason for caution is that a low threshold may make it more advantageous not to be earning if one has children.
It would be disastrous in the long term to dissuade working families from having children. The proposal to tax child benefit could be used as a mechanism to taper the level of benefits to middle-income as opposed to low-income families, with a threshold high enough to allow this to happen.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – For the Minister for Finance to assert that we all have to contribute and use this as an excuse for cancelling Christmas for old-age pensioners is beneath any notion of fairness.
People dependent on the old- age pension have already contributed. They did so throughout the 1980s when tax rates were 65 per cent and interest rates were 18 per cent. They already contributed to bailing out the AIB once (hence the insurance levy), but now being asked to contribute with their Christmas bonus goes beyond insult.
We will still have 15 Ministers of State that we don’t need. The Government should get rid of them and reinstate the Christmas bonus.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Minister for Finance said during his Budget speech that he intends to visit the world’s financial centres over the next few weeks to help rebuild Ireland’s reputation. Will he be brave enough to also visit the world’s poorest countries and explain to their citizens how they will pay, possibly with their lives, as a result of his decision to cut the overseas aid budget by a further €100 million?
This cut shows, more then anything else, how the Government has missed its opportunity to play its part on the world stage as a leading country in the fight to reduce poverty in the developing world.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – I watched the Budget proceedings on the
Irish Times
website on Tuesday evening. Despite all the rhetoric from our politicians about the gravity of the situation, the overwhelming majority of seats in the Dáil chamber were empty.
We could dramatically reduce the cost of government by reducing the number of TDs in the Dáil to the number who were on hand to participate in the debate which followed Mr Lenihan’s speech.
And were we to reduce public service numbers in the same proportion, our economic challenges would be largely overcome.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – What a great budget! Loads of extra taxes. No cuts in public sector numbers, or pay. This is what we did in the 1980s: tax, tax and more tax. We had to wait for Ray MacSharry and Alan Dukes to cut spending after seven years of tax increases before we got out of recession.
Fás lives on, CIÉ heads for more strikes over “cuts”, thousands of administrative staff stay in the HSE, the driving testers (remember them) still have half the work load of the testers in Northern Ireland, etc. etc. Bertie Ahern’s soft solutions to every problem are left in place. Thank you Fianna Fáil – two huge recessions in 30 years. What a spineless Government.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – The Government wishes to free the banks of their toxic assets so that they can start lending again. But this won’t be a problem, because in paying for these toxic assets, the Government’s Budget has taxed ordinary people so much that they cannot contemplate going to the banks for loans.
If they are like me, their plans to borrow for a home extension will be deferred. They won’t be going on holidays, to restaurants or bars. They will no longer be able to afford childcare. People in these areas will lose work. This Budget will kill the economy stone dead, and drive tax revenue down. It will cause more problems than it will solve. It is an attempt to balance books, and shows no imagination or thought for the future.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – As a yearly visitor to Ireland it is interesting to see your Budget process unfold this week. Being from Silicon Valley, it seems to me that there is not enough discussion about how the Government is promoting and fostering job creation (not just job protection) in the economy.
Ireland has done an incredible job to raise the education and experience of the Irish workforce, but it seems that the model is changing and Ireland will need to focus on moving higher up the economic food chain. Instead of commodity products (PCs, computer chips, agriculture, etc) the Government needs to figure out how to foster high-margin, high- innovation, high-complexity products.
Imagine Ireland inventing and producing the next wing for Airbus, or the next innovation in Cat scan machines for Siemens, or inventing the next Google.
Other countries that are in similar situations, such as Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore, have large government incentive programmes to foster such companies with education, venture capital help and start-up business support. Israel is potentially the most interesting example. Despite being countries of similar size to Ireland, they are prevalent in Silicon Valley circles, with leading- edge technology companies in green, software and high-tech products that are well supported by their governments.
– Yours, etc,
TOM MISAGE, San Francisco, California, USA.
Madam, – The Government told us on Tuesday that we need a healthy, functioning banking sector. It is 100 per cent correct and it tells us with good reason that credit feeds the economy and facilitates its growth. It may not be a prerequisite for growth, but many established profitable businesses are dependent on it.
Anecdotally, at any rate, our economy is craving credit and haemorrhaging jobs for lack of it. Meanwhile, the established credit providers are lame ducks by any standards, functioning solely, (and rightly), in the interests of their battered shareholders.
The market has given a firm thumbs-down to the toxic asset management proposal in the Budget. Could new lending entities be part of a solution?
As a small company director, I would welcome the passing of any legislation to facilitate the speedy establishment of institutions that could fill the yawning gaps in the business credit market.
The resulting institutions being free of toxic assets and bad debts would be less risk- averse and could lend to business and employers without looking over their backs.
So, reluctantly, I find myself agreeing with this Government. We do need a healthy functioning banking sector or lending industry. However, the current Messrs are hardly the answer.
– Yours, etc,
Madam, – This morning I spotted what looked like a freshly-applied “Axe tax” sticker on a car window in north Dublin. A portent of things to come?
– Yours, etc,