Who’s been leaking the report? July 21, 2010
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Economy, Irish Politics.trackback
I was mightily intrigued by the following article on the front page of the Sunday Business Post by Pat Leahy at the weekend. Under the heading…
Irish public sector workers among world’s highest earners
It argued that…
Ireland’s doctors, nurses and teachers are among the highest paid in the world, according to new figures that highlight the large scale of the public sector pay bill.
The figures, compiled by the National Competitiveness Council and Forfás, shows that Ireland’s specialist doctors enjoy the highest average public salaries in the world, while Irish nurses are the fourth best paid in the world.
It’s all fascinating stuff. Mention too of it in the Irish Times last week. But curiously there’s no sign of the report on either the Forfás or NCC websites and I wonder whether I’ve missed something. Any assistance gratefully accepted.
Actually, I’m being facetious. The report hasn’t been published yet [as was noted on this somewhat entertaining, and oddly familiar – in terms of the tone of some of the contributions made – thread on Politics.ie]. What seems to be the case is that someone inside Forfás or the NCC has been leaking some information – much of it not terribly new, but presented entirely uncontextualised as of yet. As was noted the NCC and Forfás are – how shall I phrase it – close to government, and the leaking has been exclusively pitched against the public sector.
Now who then could be behind it?
I’m no fan of excessive wages in the public sector [although the INTO has made some good points about how primary teachers here teach longer hours and larger classes than almost any other OECD countries], a stance I’ve been open about here for years, but I’m even less of a fan of selective leaking.
And it makes me curious as to why now? Are the terms of the Croke Park agreement somehow insufficiently congenial for our beloved government that it must follow up a further softening up of the public sector prior to another smash and grab raid on salaries and/or pensions?
Curious too, given the mood music that all is well in this best of all possible states – errors and omissions excepted. Or is it that there is intended to be yet further efforts to depress wages at higher levels in the PS.
We’ll know soon enough.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Who’s
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No, really. “Who has”, hence “who’s”. Not “whose”. Please change it. I can’t look at it any more.
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Thank you.
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Can’t access net in work, but noted and changed.
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although the INTO has made some good points about how primary teachers here teach longer hours and larger classes than almost any other OECD countries
Is that per week or year.
It is the yearly figure that would count with me.Oh those who teach the infants classes are unavailable to do anything when these kids go home.
In an interesting review of Finnish Edu. the figure for hours worked was missing.
On a depressing note the interest we pay as a state has gone up again. We are facing a default
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The INTO point about class sizes seems a bit lame.
On the one hand, they rightly claim large class sizes are bad as it leads to each child getting less attention. The teachers bandwidth can obviously only be split so many ways.
On the other hand, they also claim larger class sizes justifies higher pay. Even though though the aforementioned bandwidth has already been maxed out, so the effect of the large class size is to simply to increase the contention ratio.
The argument also leaves the INTO open to a counter claim that a future reduction in class sizes would justify a pay cut.
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Am I misreading this, Jim, or are you of the view that teachers should be available for more work “when these kids go home”?
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They should do the full contact hours.This is a resource for remedial yeaching every afternoon which should be used. I am also for a properly trained and funded classroom assistent system, one in every class. Better in my opinion than reducing class sizes. I appreciate that this clashes with orthodox mantras.
Oh I am also for jailing the relevant builders and bankers.
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WBS – you might be interested in this analysis on the SBP story: http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2010/07/having-go-in-dark.html
I see that the NCC report is now out.
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Thanks Michael, fantastic overview of the topic, and it points up the sheer dogged wrongness of these unvarnished media ‘reports’. I expect better from Pat Leahy.
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