FROM THE ARCHIVES:Autumn is once again the time for knife fights behind the political scenes as the Government prepares to cut spending budgets. Fergus Pyle reported in 1987 on the likely targets that year as Charles Haughey's Fianna Fáil government, elected the previous spring, got down to work in earnest after the summer. – JOE JOYCE
THE GOVERNMENT is poised to begin the last stages of agreeing the 1988 Estimates at its meeting today. The final decisions, now expected to be published early in October, are likely to conform closely to the Taoiseach’s instructions to the Cabinet last May when he told Ministers: “No expenditure should be regarded as sacrosanct and immune to elimination or reduction.”
Embassies may close, other semi-State bodies may follow. An Foras Forbartha is down the Swanee, and we may see more amalgamations like the ones mooted for the VECs.
All of that, the Government spokesmen insist, is still pure speculation, and until the final bitter package prepared by Ministers is published, fingers will remain crossed right across the public service, where 10,000 jobs are targeted (admittedly over several years), at a potential saving of tens of millions.
Overall, the Government is looking for savings next year of more than £300 million, which will mean heavy pruning of the largest-spending departments – Health, Education and Social Welfare. Harsh cuts are expected in Education, Foreign Affairs, Industry, Environment, with its massive payments to local government, and Agriculture.
Until the final picture emerges, the impact of the forthcoming cuts is impossible to estimate, apart from specific cases like An Foras Talúntais/ACOT, which could cut 250 jobs and save £4 million – almost exactly 10 per cent of current job levels and budgets, though the job losses could be as high as 500.
Health, already savaged in hospital closures and the rationalisation of facilities in the last six months, is expected to have more of the same, while the reduction of 38 VECs, employing some 6,800 staff at present, could result in a substantial saving in grants now totalling £134 million.
In Education, the impact is likely to be in a sharp reduction of new jobs, as the proposed raising of the school entry age and the pupil-teacher ratio begin to bite.
Savings in Social Welfare, Agriculture and Environment – where £50 million may be cut from grants to local authorities, with a concomitant local tax to make up the shortfall – may not entail many job losses, but there will be less money for grants and services. In the case of Social Welfare, benefits to the unemployed, elderly and other categories may be hit.
It is clear that the second instalment of the Government’s austerity programme, following the crash introduction of immediate measures in the Budget last March, is going to be much wider in its effect, and employ a greater variety of cost-cutting methods than was possible in the last six months.
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