Croke Park Must be Revisited

Some time ago I was facilitated by a TD in asking a parliamentary question on savings that could be achieved on a tiered pay reduction basis at the Department of Education and Skills.

The response was quite shocking to me. Protecting those who pay the standard rate of tax from any reductions with a 0% reduction and taking €3.05 per week from a €60,000 gross salary (representing a 0.26% reduction)  or €255.45 per week from a €200,000 gross salary (representing a 6.64% reduction) on an 8 point sliding scale from 0% to 15% a saving of just under €21 million (€21,000,000) can be achieved, that is before freezing increments until 2015 is taken into account, just in ONE department.

So with this in mind I did some sums. Taking into account that these costs are budgeted, they should not be taken solely as a saving to the exchequer. €20.9 million would employ just over 1,000 graduate special needs assistants, almost 600 graduate teachers or provide almost 1 million tutorial hours at third level, yet all of these things are being cut to protect pay and conditions for existing staff.

Does that sound like public service? Just to be clear, I don't begrudge anyone their salary, but the stark reality is we need more frontline public servants than we need to protect the pay of those already employed.

If replicated across the entire public sector, the service levels provided would likely be in for a vast improvement. It's not that we can't afford these things, it's that our government chooses not to take difficult decisions. A pay reduction to just under €187,000 still leaves a substantial salary, more than government ministers, and the new salary of the Taoiseach under such a regime of pay reductions.

I intend on asking a favour again to see what the levels of saving would be in other government departments, state agencies and QUANGOs. I'll blog again when I hear back

Fixing Ireland's 3rd level crisis.

A bit of a long one coming up after a substantial absence.

The answer to Ireland’s third level crisis lies in partnership

I have, for almost three years now, publicly opposed the introduction of fees based on the democratic mandate of students. There is a logical dissonance in arguing for higher quality for free; it doesn’t add up.

The reasoning behind questioning funding is even more pertinent today than it was when I first did so in 2009 through preferendum. State income to the third level sector has been slashed, student numbers are increasing, the HEA pension bill is set to balloon, and pay is protected under the Croke Park Agreement; it doesn’t compute.

I don’t believe in the principle of “free fees” as constituted in Ireland. The simple fact is that anyone would be a fool to; the 'Student Contribution' is set to rise to €3,000 by 2015, with no extra benefit to the third level sector, its students, the deficits and ultimately with no benefit to education.

Over the past three years I have seen standards and services deteriorate, funding collapse and student numbers increase. The Hunt Report Strategy to 2030 cites Policy Options for New Student Contribution (2009) in relation to student fees:

The best model [proposed in the report] is a combination of means-tested grants and student fees, allied to a system of deferred-repayment, income-contingent student loans. This model ensures that at any given time, the amount that a borrower has to repay is proportionate to his or her disposable income. This is achieved by varying the term of the loan – but without excessive penalty to borrowers who take longer to repay. It is proposed that as part of the system, individual students should have the option to pay all or part of the contribution up front.

Academic programmes face the chop (not that all sectoral realignment is a bad thing), research output is under severe pressure. All of this is leading to Ireland’s institutions sliding down the international rankings in terms of academic standards faster than a firefighter down a pole.

Support services keep students in education; they are not just extras that can be discarded, however anything that isn’t teaching related falls ready for the next chop of the axe, with libraries, IT facilities and tutorials in the mix with counselling, learner support units and student advisory.

It is imperative that we explore how students, alumni and state in partnership with industry and philanthropy can successfully fund our institutions into the future. There must now be a move towards endowments for current spending rather than primarily one-off capital spending in the philanthropic area. Most importantly, there must be no cost disincentive or barrier at point of entry, as stated in the Hunt Report.

The key learning from our student forums is that students are willing to pay for higher quality and more supports, but only on the basis that the same commitment, heretofore lacking, comes from government; this will make the bitter pill of fees easier to swallow and appeal to those philanthropists who want to make a difference, not simply make-up a shortfall. The state as co-ordinator, must lead, and must show there is a plan to attract the brightest from overseas and keep Ireland’s brightest here.

A little direction please

So my sat nav Geraldine is getting on in years now. I found this out at the weekend when 3 of us travelled to Rosscarbery in West Cork. The West part is very important. The people from there would hate to be associated with other Cork people.

Anyhow, Geraldine is ageing. She misses roundabouts, knows all the old roads and none of the new ones and advises me not to use whilst driving, actually I have to agree to that before she'll talk to me at all. She's the typical woman really.

Anyhow I'm rambling in getting to a point. I'm loving the new One Direction song - What Makes You Beautiful. Is it really strange that a 24 year old man. Yes, I just described myself as a man. Strange. Anyhow. Is it really strange that a 24 year old man like a really poppy song aimed at tweeny bopping girls??

Screw it I don't care. Do I light up your world like nobody else?

Sometimes I Wonder

Some of the stuff that goes on in the world is really puzzling sometimes.

I had what I would consider to be a fairly big victory at work today, not so much because I fought for something and won, but because I asked a question and it turned out I was right and gained a substantial amount of money as a result.

Then you have a domino effect at the News of the World. A few dodgy characters decide to hack dead peoples' voicemail and a whole 168 year old print publication sinks in the space of a week. Hardly fair to all the people who work there and had no knowledge or part in this scandal. Rupert Murdoch seems to be willing to just do it.

Added to that the whole JLC unconstitutionality. The employer that took it was probably described as an idiot, a tight arse and any number of significantly more derogatory names. Just because it was an unpopular action, doesn't mean it was wrong, and although it will have an impact at some level, this country has much larger issues than JLC wage mechanisms. If our government were to have the balls to slash and burn on the long term unemployed then they'd be begging for these low paid (hah...€8.65 is luxury wages to unemployed people in most of Europe) and maybe some of our more necessary hospitals could keep their A&E open after 8pm!

Anyhow, a thought, a rambling and a little rant from me!

So, day one in the new job and my thoughts turn to the year ahead. It was a fairly jam packed day all round. We had a great send off for the lads on Friday which resulted in merriment in Limerick city as well as Limerick's University suburb. Sad to see the team go but glad to have a new one around me.

So what ramblings have I today. Well, none really. I just thought I'd check in and let ye know that I haven't forgotten all about ye.

Did we blow it, or did it exist at all?

One of my pet peeves is the phrase "blew the boom" which has permeated the media for a number of years now.

Having reflected on this recently I came to an interesting, if slightly odd hypothesis. Of course I have no proof, but neither does the BTB brigade.

So, here goes. Before Ireland ever had a boom, Dublin was very well serviced by fantastic infrastructure, Dublin is where the commentariat lives and Dublin got a lot of progress from 1995 onwards. The issue being that the rest of the country started to catch up, the focus switched from Dublin to the regions and hell did we get a lot of much needed infrastructure in the regions, albeit that some of it was part privately funded.

Stadia, motorways, we finally got motorways, schools, colleges, university capital projects, parks. But I do agree with the begrudgers in a way. We have unsustainable levels of public service salaries, welfare, current service expenditure.

People now believe they're being screwed because they're expected to pay European levels of tax on their bloated salaries. The people who have a right to feel shafted are the ones that never bought into the boom, well maybe they had an SSIA. Ah the SSIA, remember that, the scheme whereby they state gave people free money. Shafted we were, blown it was. Imagine a country that had so much spending going on and so much tax coming in that it had to screw the poor citizens by giving them free money.

It could never last, I remember saying it at 18 years of age on a cold October evening in 2006. Walking from Neptune's Hostel in Killarney to the Gleneagle Hotel with a fellow member of Fianna Fáil's Con Colbert Cumann I said something along the lines of "you know, the government is going to have to do something to control the price of houses, to bring the average price back to 3 times the average industrial wage." I had the theory of negative equity explained to me (by a developer's son...the irony) I may write another blog on that topic, and another one on my first Ard-Fheis that was on that cold October weekend.

Anyhow, I suppose this rambling is questioning whether there was actually a boom at all? Or was it all an illusion? Maybe the truth lies somewhere between, maybe it was an economic blip, and maybe, just maybe we got exactly what we deserved.

Well, this is new!

So I've decided to start a blog. God only knows why! I was out for a ramble along the seafront earlier on (hence the blog name). So, I'm here in Spanish Point and there's absolutely zilch to do, which is exactly what I was looking for and it's given me some time to reflect and ponder, and enjoy lots of tea.



Anyhow, about this time 7 years ago I had just completed one of the best experiences I have gone through, Transition Year. Strolling along the seafront earlier I was thinking about the year ahead of me, how students will view me and acting as someone who can provide them even some little inspiration.

The conclusion I came to was a bit of an unexpected blast from the past. As I watched the waves batter the shore it was easy to see how the Armada ended up broken on the Atlantic rocks. The power of the waves pummelling the beach and the cliffs gave me a little food for thought.


Could I be a wave, powerfully bashing the Armada of problems onto the shoreline of life? As the spray came up to meet me with the smell of the kelp hanging in the air I looked out on the empty beach under the dull skyline and remembered the primary principle that was instilled in us back in Doc and Dicey's TY: You can only get out of something what you put in! This was underpinned by the ethos which came back to me today as I was on my ramble: AFFIRM.CHALLENGE.EXCEL.