Irish Independent, September 2013 --
Benchmarking was meant to link private and public sector wages, but was compared to an ATM for public sector workers. The public sector wanted to be paid the same as the private sector, but without the same terms and conditions, while retaining their job security and pension entitlements. Mr [Micheál] Martin [Fianna Fáil leader] claimed this was his main concern, and said he “would never have been an advocate for the massive tax reductions that happened”.
Irish Times on the latest iteration of the post-election government formation process --
A commission to examine pay levels across the public sector, including for new entrants, is proposed in the agreement to allow Fianna Fáil to facilitate a Fine Gael-led minority government. The commission, to be established within six months, is cast by sources as a mechanism for preventing strikes across the public sector, which would have the potential to cripple a minority government reliant on opposition co-operation ... A Fianna Fáil source described the commission as a benchmarking-type process” that is likely to look at all pay levels.
This comes on top of the pathetic concession to Fianna Fáil to drop water charges which wouldn't have been even at the level of the supposedly massively subsidized water in wasteful Saudi Arabia.
If anyone has any doubts about why the Irish economic crisis happened, or whether ir could happen again, they only need look at what is happening when Fianna Fáil got back in a position of policy influence.
[Photo: Micheál Martin (R) visiting Bashar al-Assad]
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