In Reply to: re: drive a public servant mad day 2010 posted by Young Fella on February 26, 2010 at 15:05:27:

Recessionista down the page has already pointed out how little Ireland spent on supporting its public service even at the height of the boom and I quote

"Ireland's spend on education in 2006 was a mere $10,468 per 3rd level student - a little ahead of Brazil at $9,994 per student but way below the average OECD and less than half the USA spend. Then overall levels of education spend are worse even - we were third from the bottom, just slightly ahead of the Slovak Republic and Greece.

Ireland's spend on health in 2006 put us 7th from the OECD bottom rankers � Korea, Mexico, Estonia, Poland, Slovak Republic and Greece were lower spenders than us.

Our social expenditure was pretty poor too as was our score on income poverty � close to the top at 11.5% of working age people.

The only thing we scored relatively highly on was the % of national income spent on overseas aid where we were 6th from the top in 2006.

Our R&D spend was about half the OECD average. The Irish percentage of workers in ICT was 3rd from the bottom only beaten by Turkey and Greece on this one."

Basically we were too cheap to pay for a proper public service. Who needed stupid stuff like education and health and decent infrastructure? And this was during a so-called 'boom'.

Now we want to cut it back even further because we let the private sector run riot but prefer to blame the public sector?

Just one bank's bad 'inefficiencies and out-date work practices' is costing us - you me a mere four billion euro - and nothing to show for.

I think that's a little more than just a share of the blame - the private sector IS to BLAME. Solely.

We have had a really low-cost public sector by any international yardstick - and now we are cutting it back even further with layoffs and retirements on a scale not seen in decades. This will have an impact on services. So don't be surprised when the phones are not answered. Don't be surprised when your kids grades go down. Don't be surprised when you are not seen by the doctor as fast as you would like.

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