Madam, – I would like to thank Jonathan Law (April 16th) for his excellent suggestion that public servants’ income be benchmarked against that of unemployed people.
I am a full-time civil servant of 25 years experience in areas including social welfare. My weekly gross pay is €540. My actual take-home (net) after various levies and deductions is €267. After the Budget changes it will be significantly less from next month,
As an unemployed person, my means-tested personal rate of assistance would be €204 per week, plus an entitlement to a medical card and ancillary benefits from the health board to help me with my fuel bills and mortgage.
If I were to be benchmarked against unemployed people who don’t pay any levies or deductions on their income, my salary would double overnight as no Government could conceivably suggest clawing back half of people’s welfare benefits via income deductions. (In the recent Budget it has effectively done this to people under 20 on the dole, but to attempt the same across the board would be political suicide).
Given that I work in a line section which processes several hundred thousands of euro a week in welfare benefits, I doubt that any benchmarking exercise would determine the value of my job at less than €540 per week.
My morale is lifted by Mr Law’s expression of solidarity. If his suggestion is heeded, maybe I can look forward to a pay rise sometime soon? Bring it on, I say. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Jim O’Leary (Business This Week, April 17th) muses about the willingness of Irish residents to pay more tax for public services. Is it safe to say that we are facing into Berlin’s taxes but Boston’s public services? – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I have read with interest that the Lough Derg is being prepared for three-day pilgrimages, as people turn to prayer to heal their financial burdens brought on by the “fat cats” of the Celtic Tiger.
I suggest instead that Lough Derg be turned into a penal colony for all the guilty who borrowed millions, wined and dined around the world, and now seem to be getting off scot-free as they are baled out by the Government with taxpayers’ money. Drop them on this ancient island of prayer in sackcloth and let them live off their greed and memories for the four season of one year – a small penance for all the decent people who lost their jobs and life savings. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – As a diehard liberal and a supporter of unions and the need for government in our lives, it is time to speak out in the defence of those people in the banking sector of our society. “Bankers” are handy hate figures and easy scapegoats.
I recently met a young person whose father and mother are in the banking business and she told me, “My parents are honest, decent, hard working people but the way the media and politicians treat them publicly you would imagine my parents were crooks.” Will somebody in the media or the political arena please tell me what collective crimes “bankers have committed”? – Yours, etc,
A chara, – Seán Flynn (Opinion, April 18th) relates many anecdotal examples of teachers who are suffering as a result of the financial crisis. His point is that, before we label them “whingers”, we should stop and observe the serious nature of their financial predicaments.
This human-interest approach to special interests is particularly prevalent at the moment: before you say the public servants have “some nerve”, observe this garda and his wife, this public servant or any other individual from the apparently “protected” industries.
In actuality, Flynn’s argument is parallel to the nature of the criticisms. He doesn’t seem to realise that every penny we commit to resolve the issues he outlines comes from somewhere equally sensitive where another human-interest story of woe lurks to promote another lobby group. Anecdotes of suffering tell us nothing when such anecdotes abound in the numbers they do today.
Certainly, the teachers don’t deserve the position they are in now, but neither do most of the other people suffering from the enormous losses this country is making. Put simply, undue suffering alone is not enough of a reason to commit to funding anything when the amount of people suffering so grossly outweighs the resources available. Government funding is now a zero-sum game.
Let us remember that the Budget is directed overwhelmingly at three things: health, education and social welfare. The predicaments of teachers in their work and home lives are no doubt real and serious, but do not outweigh the needs of the sick and unemployed. Those are the choices we face, and once the teachers realise this they may start to understand that the anger they are encountering is not out of ignorance of their plight, but out of recognition of the more serious nature of the plights of others. – Is mise,
Madam, – Some years ago, Charlie McCreevy as minister for finance, with the full support of the PDs, individualised the tax system. This change was really only relevant for the PAYE sector, as the business- owning and self-employed sectors “tax managed” it. The change is now having a very negative effect on the many who became two- income families – but which new circumstances have forced to return to single income status. May I suggest “un-individualising” the tax system to once again be fair to all families.
The alternative for the single- income married couple is to separate, as a “separated married single income couple” is treated as a double-income couple for tax purposes. So, I suggest to married couples where one is unemployed (now not needed by the State to work) that separation is the only way to be treated equally by the tax laws.
So much for the Constitutional notion of protecting the family unit. Oh for a change of Government – anything has to be better that the present one. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Is it more or less unpatriotic for a citizen of this economically troubled Republic to invest his euros in University of Leeds student accommodation or to spend them shopping for the family’s groceries in Newry? (I am informed that there is a high demand from Irish students for such student accommodation at all the Irish colleges). – Yours, etc,