Madam, – As a primary school teacher facing yet more pay cuts, I wish to raise the issue, not of the harsh medicine we must swallow, but who is doling out the unpalatable stuff.
There is a consensus emerging as to the root causes of our current economic crash – a perilous property bubble engineered by short-sighted government, facilitated by bonus-hungry bankers, ignored by the regulator and capitalised upon by “developers” (a term I dislike having lived in one of their shoe-box apartments).
Now that the inevitable has occurred and our hubris has turned to humiliation, just who is deemed accountable and who is making reparations?
1. The same party which led us blindly to economic ruin remains atop of its perch, unabashed by its incompetence and insistent that “we are where we are” as if the current mess were as result of a surprise meteor shower rather than the consequence of its own policies. Politicians do not pay for their mistakes.
2. The bankers who gambled stupidly, heaped 100 per cent debt over 35 years upon young teachers and flung money at any gombeen with a hard hat and a harder neck, remain unrepentant too. The only difference is that now the bank directors are protected by billions of taxpayers’ euro from receiving the market’s true judgment on their performance. And so they grumble about a mere salary of €500,000. Bankers do not pay for their mistakes.
3. Patrick Neary, the former regulator, received €630,000 as a final thanks for so diligently not noticing the secret director’s loans and impending banking meltdown. The watchman doesn’t pay for his mistakes.
4. The helicopter class who whooped it up on the back of over-priced houses and over-zealous zoning have also found deliverance. No debtors’ prison for those who owe millions, no embarrassing court appearances or repossessions, as Nama agrees to purchase their most toxic debts and pay an extra €7,000,000,000 for the privilege of taking the heat off our gallant developers. Those in the tent at the Galway Races are not expected to pay for their mistakes.
The price, we now see, is to paid by the “little people”. The peasants are to put their shoulder to wheel – the carers, the blind, the newly unemployed, even the reviled public sector worker, they can all contribute handsomely. That we do so with such docility says, I feel, more about us as citizens than it does about our “betters” who are emboldened as they observe us acquiesce to unprecedented cuts.
I would take a pay cut and justify to my students the cuts in education generally if I believed for a moment that there had been the radical reform of the political, banking, regulatory and planning systems to ensure we don’t wind up here again.
What galls me is to see a country at odds with itself and the burden placed on the backs of the low paid while those chiefly responsibly must struggle to keep a straight face as they reflect on their good fortune to remain in high office. This crisis reveals a sickness at the heart of our Republic and it falls to ordinary people to address this root cause rather than cut painfully at the symptoms.
I commend all who resist the current agenda and demand that, if there be unpleasant cures to be endured, at least there be new, trusted physicians to administer them. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I am writing in shock more than anger. I have just read that Bord Gais workers are to receive 3.5 per cent pay rises. This follows the Dáil’s decision to take an extra week’s paid leave post Christmas.
I am a psychiatric nurse. I am working Christmas Day for double time and Christmas Eve for no extra (I am taking a 7.5 per cent pay cut for this). I am also back working on Monday with no time off. Fairness? Please give me a break and people, stop telling me how lucky I am. Goodbye Ireland soon, please God; away to a country that respects me. I am not angry any more, but genuinely upset and demoralised. – Your, etc,