Business And Leadership: Taoiseach indicates future public-sector jobs cuts

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Taoiseach indicates future public-sector jobs cuts

09.11.2009
The Taoiseach Brian Cowen TD has indicated possible cuts in the number of public-sector workers in the longer term, in addition to potential pay cuts in the short-term over the weekend.

In an interview with RTE’s This Week programme, the Taoiseach said that he would be willing to look at public-sector numbers in the medium to long-term, as well as the “whole system of allowances”

However, he made it clear that savings were needed in the short-term, adding that “the immediate process is obtaining the monies”.

The Taoiseach also called for fundamental reform of the country’s public service, saying that cutting the public-sector pay bill was not enough.

The Government is seeking to cut €1.3bn from the public-sector pay bill in the upcoming December budget, out of a targeted total of €4bn savings in public expenditure.

However, in the wake of the Taoiseach comments over the weekend, Fine Gael derided what it said was the Taoiseach’s “eleventh-hour stance on public sector reform as “laughable”.

“Fianna Fáil is directly responsible for most of the dysfunctional aspects of the public sector. So to hear the Taoiseach’s eleventh-hour call for fundamental reform, weeks before the Budget, is a cause of incredulity,” said Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Richard Bruton TD.

According to Bruton, Fianna Fáil delivered the “decentralisation debacle”, which he said has now been largely abandoned, and who set up the HSE, “without achieving any of the rationalisation that the HSE was supposed to produce”.

Fianna Fáil also presided over two benchmarking programmes, which awarded generous increases without measurable reform or productivity, Bruton said.

“Brian Cowen promised public sector reform when he became Taoiseach. Since then, there has been zero progress. As far as this Government’s ability to achieve reform is concerned, the horse bolted long ago,” he added.