Madam, – The essential recommendations of Dr Colm McCarthy’s “An Bord Snip Nua” report must be implemented. The €5 billion in savings that the report has targeted must be achieved.
This is vital if we want to begin to restore our public finances to remain solvent as a country.
There are two fundamental fiscal tasks which we must achieve in order to revive our dead economy and achieve prosperity again for our people.
Firstly, the left-of-centre wing of the media and academia in Ireland wants, at all costs, for us to avoid doing the thing that will truly get our economy on to the road to recovery.
Namely, slashing income tax rates (for the most productive people in our economy) and other growth-inhibiting taxes.
The basic laws of economics tell us that in a recession, the right course of action is to cut tax rates in order to stimulate economic growth.
Slashing income tax rates leaves more money in people’s pockets, which will in turn give people more confidence to spend and invest in our economy.
That ultimately will encourage the banks to loosen credit, because they will see there is life and a willingness in the economy again, and the banks will want to be part of that.
The Government will have no choice but to do this ultimately, because tax revenues will just continue to dry up inexorably under our current fiscal strategy. The inane tax rises that the Government have implemented have destroyed this economy. Consumer confidence is shot, and this economy is dead.
In summation: Slash Government spending massively (to have our State actually live within its means) and aggressively slash income tax rates in our economy to re-ignite consumer and business activity and growth (this will in turn generate the hitherto non-existent tax revenue that the Government needs to restore the public finances in addition to slashing Government spending).
Trust in the pro-enterprise nature of the Irish people, and we will come through this. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – No doubt there are many cost reduction areas which the McCarthy report missed, and one of them is reducing the number of TDs in the Dáil.
In the UK there are 644 MPs for a population of 60 million. If we applied the same ratio here as in the UK then there should be 43 TD’s in the Dáil, however even a reduction in TDs from 166 to 100 would be a start. – Yours etc,
FRANK DALY,
Ferns Upper,
Ferns,
Co Wexford.
A chara, – The report by the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure will doubtless raise the hackles of many interest groups in the State.
However there are more fundamental points to make about the quality of the report and its suitability for informing the shape of public policy in Ireland in the medium term.
“An Bord Snip Nua” makes a number of “common sense” proposals for cutting the costs of public services, however they do not have any regard to the purpose and intent of public policy.
Firstly, Ireland has obligations to international treaties. For example, proposals to cut programmes and policies which will lead to an increase in our obligation to buy carbon credits are patently absurd.
A thorough review of the consequences of the report on our international obligations must be undertaken, and preferably by a qualified policy analyst not an accountant.
Secondly, the report fails to address the displacement effects of budget cuts. For example the removal of free access to health care for those on low incomes will inevitably result in delayed presentation for treatment and escalating costs for acute care.
These are just two of the many weaknesses that run through the report.
The State needs a radical review of public services which reduces public expenditure while ensuring that obligations continue to be met.
This report fails to meet that objective. – Is mise,
ROBERT SCOTT,
Glencorrib,
Co Mayo.
Madam, – “An Bord Snip” has spoken. The only thing it has got right is the necessity for saving though it possibly understates the amount.
The proposal is unfair and unworkable in almost every aspect. It treats different sections differently and is a recipe for conflict and dividing the nation further.
It will set section against section and is too complex, too itty bitty for fast implementation and could be an administrative nightmare.
The proposal to reduce jobs is lunacy at this stage, like giving a blood donation while the jugular is haemorrhaging. It is based on the false assumption that we are in a recession that will pass.
This is the new world reality that technology has created.
The option of full or nearly full employment will never return. We must protect the jobs we have, even public ones, private sector unemployment is about to explode, just look about you.
Redeploy the public sector to provide the services we will so desperately need in the immediate future.
The additional and immediate redundancy and pension and welfare cost of job cuts will make a bad situation worse.
The only workable option is an across-the-board reduction of between 10 and 20 per cent. It would be easier to implement immediately and would unite the nation, even if only in opposition to it. If it comes to the crunch run an election on it.
Everybody will feel the pain as they would if we had a devaluation option available. Then set about changing our society to cope with far fewer jobs and become more self-reliant.
Ditch Nama, it will bankrupt us. We must realise that we are playing by different rules. The economic “recovery” proposal in this report is not fit for purpose. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Your headline on Mark Hennessy’s article (July 17th) reads “Government could be damned if it does, and damned if it doesn’t”.
He should be aware that the need to correct our finances is not a matter of whether or not this particular Government survives – rather it is a matter of our national survival.
Commentators from every quarter have thrown in the words “equity” and “fairness”.
I ask you – where is there a semblance of either ethic when it is proposed to cut the present €204 weekly dole allowance while the most highly trusted and educated among us, our TDs, judiciary and consultants, are being paid up to thirty times that amount?
Vincent Browne recently suggested that, until our finances are back on track, no person in the State should be paid in excess of €100,000 per annum (€2,000 per week), that is, a multiple of ten times the weekly dole payment.
Anyone struggling to live on this sum will find plenty of advice from those already managing to do so. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Welcome to McCarthyism Irish style. Yes, we are in an economic crisis and urgent and radical steps must be taken to address it.
But who caused the crisis? Politicians? Bankers? Economists? Developers? Speculators? And who should pay to get us out of it? Under McCarthyism: the poor, the sick, the old, families who need support and children. Children who have special needs, who are Travellers, who don’t speak English and who live in disadvantaged and isolated communities.
In short, if the Celtic Tiger never came next or near your door, you are the most likely to be required to pay for the rest of the country’s past excesses.
Doubtless there are many sensible proposals in Mr McCarthy’s report. However, he proposes that the biggest hit it is to be taken by those who can least afford it and who least deserve it.
Many of the cuts he proposes will result in significant long-term increase in costs to the State for years to come.
Every proposed cut must be assessed in value-for-money terms not just in relation to immediate and short term savings but in relation to long-term implications. Cuts which will inevitably generate long term increased costs in health, education, social welfare, justice and housing services must not be proceeded with. Alternative and deserving targets must be found. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – I note that “An Bord Snip Nua” has proposed that the Government should rationalise Ireland’s third-level education sector.
May I suggest we start this process by insisting that all Irish universities and colleges close their departments of economics. I fail to see why the tax-payers of this State should continue to pay the wages of those who engage in an activity that Paul Krugman has described as “spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst”.
Quite apart from the money this would save the Department of Education, we can also hope that life on the dole might – who knows? – encourage academic economists to recast their discipline into something that contributes to the common good. At the moment, its sole function seems to be to provide rhetorical support for the discredited political ideology of neoliberalism. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Interesting to note that among the compilers of the report of “An Bord Snip Nua” is the second secretary general of the Department of Finance.
With the coming cuts, it seems unlikely the Department will contain so many Indians that it requires two chiefs.
Curious then that in the relevant section 3.9 of the report, I could find no reference to the duplication of functions and salaries at the top. Perhaps I should read it again. I must have missed something. – Yours etc,
J GERARD O’DONOVAN
Law Library,
Dublin 7.