That must be quite some special advice… July 18, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
I’m still fascinated by the issue of special advisers pay in the Coalition. Ruairí Quinn apologia is curious in the extreme. As the Irish Times noted earlier in the week:
An internal Labour survey recently revealed the breach of the €92,672 pay cap for special advisers was the single biggest issue raised on the doorstep when TDs and Senators were canvassing in the fiscal treaty referendum campaign.
“That was only because we set a bar for pay that we broke ourselves,” Mr Quinn said in an interview with The Irish Times.
That’s true. But he continues:
“It was one of the things that came up on the doorstep . . . In retrospect, yes, we would have done it differently if we had the chance, given the way it was done,” he said. “I suspect every day in retrospect about at least two of 10 decisions that I would make I would do differently.”
And then:
And what would he do differently in the case of special advisers? “Probably set a more realistic level of remuneration.”
It’s strange this expectation that an advisor would receive more money than a TD and the wage limit was set ‘is equivalent to the salary of the highest-paid principal officers in the Civil Service’. Should an advisor receive more than that?
Look at the figures for remuneration of said advisors. €127,000, €114,000, €110,000 and so on. These are, let’s admit it, fantastic sums. One could view jobs like this as a service to the state, and in that respect as something where one would give as much as receive – or putting such foolish idealism aside, because after all we’re seeing precious little of it exhibited in this instance one could argue that Quinn’s attitude simply makes no sense. Where is the compulsion to work in these jobs? And in the context of mass unemployment one suspects that a ‘realistic level of remuneration’ could be quite some way south of €92,672. And I don’t say that lightly, simply that there are numerous individuals with a wide range of skills who would work for €91k, or €81k or €51k and still consider those pretty damn good wages by any mean or mention.
But what’s particularly curious is the way in which none of that seems to impact. The problem isn’t – at least to judge from Quinn’s words, that the advisors are paid way in excess of what they should be given the positions they hold, but that people perceive that they’re paid too much. And he throws in the entirely diversionary issue of the existence of special advisors themselves when he says ‘pay levels should be separated from the concept of special advisers, which he strongly defended. “The Labour Party invented special advisers, going back in fact to 1973,”
“But the concept of the special advisers, I mean the pay that they’re on now is a fraction, is half of what it was under Bertie Ahern. Coalition governments would not work without special advisers.” That was why the British Labour Party had followed the Irish model, he said.
A ‘fraction… half of what it was under Bertie Ahern’? I don’t think that cuts it in the current climate, let alone that it should have cut it ever.
It’s also odd how muted the response has been to this. One letter in the Irish Times today which asks the reasonable question…
Perhaps the pay “cap” set for bankers at a mindboggling €500,000 which really means a remuneration package worth €800,000? Who are these guys kidding?
Who indeed?
There’s two issues here. One is the question of how much advisors should be paid, and yes, clearly they are – to say the least – paid very, very generously.
But the other issue is the almighty political cock up of first setting a cap on advisors salaries – which no-one forced them to do. And then going off and breaking that self-imposed cap left, right and centre.
That’s the political problem, and that’s why they’re getting such (well-deserved) flack for it. If they hadn’t introduced the cap in the first place I really don’t think we’d be seeing anywhere near as much blowback on it. Because, without the cap, the comparison would be with what came before – which as you state above has much better optics.
I have to say, I still really can’t believe how they could have been so utterly stupid to walk themselves into this. The mind boggles.
Very true re the second point you make. But as to the first I still can’t see anything from others (and I’m not suggesting you doing this) in terms of a justification for the salaries. The assumption of Quinn et al seems to be that they just are like that. I can’t imagine much that would be likely to set off the touch paper of public opinion at this point in time.
In some ways it’s surprising that someone as completely tone deaf when it comes to this sort of thing ever rose to be Labour leader and Minister for Finance. It’s not that his political assumptions are any different to those of the rest of the right wing liberals who populate the parliamentary Labour Party, but at least some of them are markedly better about presenting those assumptions in a palatable way. Both this stuff and his contributions to the Labour’s Way documentary had me bewildered at his arrogant stupidity.
He had a very odd quote about people from working class – low income backgrounds in that programme. I cant quite remember it verbatim, but the basic implication seemed to be is that really all working class people should aspire to is being middle class, and the LPs purpose was to help them in that.
That’s a very interesting point and not just in relation to Quinn. There is a tacit attitude that that is somehow the correct way forward.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, in some of the cases, the advisors were earning those sort of salaries prior to govt. And I think in the 1992-97 govt (at least the latter part of it anyway) advisor salaries were specifically linked to prior salary, plus a premium of something line 5 or 10%.
Equally, I’m fairly certain that others are earning significantly more than they did before.
But that’s neither here nor there. I think the reason the ‘that’s how much they cost’ line is coming out is because these are handpicked people. So arguable, that *is* how much *these* people cost. When you’ve only one candidate for the job, the candidate has a lot of negotiation advantages. Especially when the employer isn’t spending his/her money to get you.
Isn’t that part and parcel of the problem though, the idea they’re handpicked, one person appropriate for the position, etc, etc. I certainly don’t want to question anyone individually as regards their bona fides, but I find it implausible that the role of a Ministerial adviser in this state is of such specificity that there’s only one person who can fit the bill.
I also worry about a mindset (and again not pointing back at you Damian) that sees previous income levels as necessitating that a position must match or exceed them. These are voluntary hirings. No one is forced to become a Ministerial advisor. There’s no element of compulsion. And I think that in terms of the public good the positions might appropriately incur a loss of income for some not merely in an exemplary fashion but also because the concept of public service demands it (granted that can be nebulous).
I think it’s a problem with the Special Advisor system. These tend to be hand-picked people. It’s not that there aren’t lots of people out there who would have the capability to do the job. Quite clearly there are. But the Minister picks the person they want. It is a political appointment after all.
So you see a bunch of party staffers moving over to the govt machine.
I’m not knocking the advisor system here. I happen to think it’s essential – especially for left of centre parties (yes, yes, I know, Labour aren’t left wing, blah, blah blah). You don’t really want your Minister isolated with nothing but a bunch of conservative higher civil servants for company, now do you.
A person who claims that €92k isn’t enough compensation is taking the piss claiming to be left-wing.
To steal a line from G.A. Cohen: If you’re an egalitarian, how come you’re so rich?
Not you, personally, Damian; I mean just in general.
One planned advisor did walk when he couldn’t get the deal he wanted. One of the people Jimmy Deenihan wanted had been pushing for a higher salary than he was offered. He didn’t get it and went back to the Arts Council. I wonder is it significant that he had been in a public sector job. Did all of the (other) advisors who are getting salaries above the top of the PO scale come from the private sector?
Don’t think so. Few others have left too.
Coveney stressed the patriotism of one of his to warrant another breach of the cap at €130,000. He left after five months for a hedgefund in England. There was another in health from the FG back room who two months ago after Reilly spent months trying to break the cap .. despite having drafted FairCare along with Alan Dukes and others.
Bruton’s €127,000 man hit the headlines budget week. Needed the comparative salary you see despite him being FG back for the last either years.
Howlin, the one to set and enforce the cap broke it for his. Another from within Labour, adviser to Quinn while he was leader.
Varadkar’s needed coaxing too. Chair of the Fine Gael National Executive and a former adviser to Gay Mitchell
on and on it goes
http://itsapoliticalworld.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/irish-government-special-advisers-the-list/
The SpAd that Coveney appointed was a Fergal Leamy. Mr. Leamy was formerly head of Greencore USA, which is part of the Greencore Group. Its Chief Executive is Patrick Coveneny, Simon’s brother, and himself no stranger to controversies over high pay.
Mr. Coveney obviously trawled the private sector looking for the appropriate people to advise him.
As noted above, Mr. Leamy’s patriotism was heavily stressed in order to authorise a salary of €130k. Four months in, Mr. Leamy’s nationalism waned and he went to work for a private equity firm in London.
The only justification that has been put forward is that these sums are what the people concerned were earning previously. It would be interesting to learn how many of them this applies to. Also why labour ministers think people on these salaries are the most trustworthy.
That’d be much what I think too.
…..Minister isolated with nothing but a bunch of conservative higher civil servants…..?
MInisters are members of political parties and when they come into Government have a programme they want put into action. Unfortunately in this day and age it is … left of centre …. Ministers who are driving through conservative policies. Is that going to be Labours excuse come the next General Election? The civil servants made me do it ….
Unfortunate Quinn would bring up the UK considering Kenny, Reilly and Gilmore are all paying advisers over what Coulson (the highest paid) was getting.
There are several over the cap who came from within Fine Gael yet we are told needed a salary comparative to the vast fortunes they would earn in the private sector. This, bare in mind is the same private sector papers tell us is on it’s knees where you couldn’t hope to achieve the rolls royce golden unicorn remuneration everyone in the public sector supposedly enjoys.
Amazing how some things are temporally forgotten.
Almost a majority and both in Quinn’s case came from the media. Not to do down their previous work but aside from job security only a handful like those who came from Arthur Cox and others eventually left to work for hedge funds could seriously claim the need to be coaxed.
The figures I totted up last December had breaking the cap add close to a million onto the yearly budget. Several pay rises and new advisers have been added since and my original sums didn’t include advisers to junior ministers and Chief Whip Kehoe (!). Interestingly we had to wait till the announcement of Michael D’s staff before we got the first female over the cap.
No doubt some are kept extremely busy but we are talking about talent who apparently refused to work for ninety two thousand euro per year while we are closing hospitals and sacking teachers. Add in almost every Minister paying PR firms out of secretary allowance and the money being on outside consultancy (and Enda’s sticky pages) and this achievement of wasting less money then Fianna Fáil would soon start to unravel.
“No doubt some are kept extremely busy but we are talking about talent who apparently refused to work for ninety two thousand euro per year while we are closing hospitals and sacking teachers.”
And working for a social democratic party!
What is this horseshit about coalition governments being unable to work without special advisors? That he adds on the non-sequitur about the UK Labour party using the ‘Irish model’ is even worse – when have UK Labour been in a coalition in the last, say, thirty years?
When I think of a special advisor, I think of the characters in ‘The Thick of It’. This is not complimentary. A brief look at who has been hired by our own lords and masters reveals a vast cadre of media types. So a special advisor is a spin doctor. A spin doctor funded by the public. I have to opine: if special advisors are so integral to ‘coalition governments’ then surely they are more of a party political beast than a civil servant? Should their pay not be then borne by the parties rather than the public purse? One could even go half-way and suggest that the public purse could give a contribution and the party could top it up to what they feel is the appropriate rate.
The last part about remuneration is a personal bug-bear of mine. The oft repeated trope is that ‘we cannot get good people unless we pay such high salaries’ whether it be in banking, semi-states, or government departments. Recently the BBC appointed a new director-general at three-quarters the salary they paid to the previous director-general and they had no difficulty attracting interest in the post. (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0704/breaking35.html)
Re the Banking pay cap, you will note that some months ago (perhaps Nov. ’11) Matthew Elderfield, the watchdog, told the Oireachtas that the pay cap was too low to attract the necessary people. Again, the pay cap relates to basic pay only. It gets more interesting if you dig out the Nyberg Report. Nyberg asked various banking officials if pay had an impact on their performance and was given a resounding ‘No!’. They claimed that it was their natural desire to do well in their role and a natural competitive instinct which encouraged them. Nyberg accepted this and argued that there was ‘little to argue against limiting pay and bonuses’. And yet, €500,000 is not enough to secure the right people…according to the Financial Regulator. It is an odd world we live in.
On the banks its also worth remembering that the most intense lobbying came from below the CEO level in AIB for example. Linked salary scales inside the bank are a great motivator
Whereas in order to goad people in an economy that has 14.8 per cent unemployment to work there have to be reforms in social welfare. It is indeed an odd world we live in.
Look at the figures for remuneration of said advisors. €127,000, €114,000, €110,000 and so on. These are, let’s admit it, fantastic sums.
Well, its more like the simple reality of high salaries in the public sector.
In Minister Quinn’s department alone, there are over 30 civil servants on more than €100k. There are over 400 second level teachers earning more than the same figure. There are over 200 in the third level sector on more than €150k.
One could view jobs like this as a service to the state, and in that respect as something where one would give as much as receive – or putting such foolish idealism aside
Honestly, it is a bit of foolish notion, and not one I’d imagine you’d apply in general to those funded from the public purse.
there are numerous individuals with a wide range of skills who would work for €91k, or €81k or €51k and still consider those pretty damn good wages
If Quinn’s special adviser was on €51k, taking into account the value of tenure, s/he would be earning less than the average teacher.
While that may sound kind of justified in a fluffy sort of way, the reality is that given the skills and level of effort demanded, it would be totally unrealistic.
As you appear to know all about ‘the skills and level of effort demanded,’ enlighten us. Seriously, go on. Nothing ‘fluffy’, just apply your rigorous intellect to the question.
Bartley, I think you jumped the shark – at least in relation to how seriously I take your contributions – about four weeks ago. But as a parting shot, so to speak, I’ll give you this. If you’d been reading what I’ve written over the past six years you’d see one thing I was adamantly against was excessive salaries in the public sector.
As for your ‘skills and level of effort demanded’ point comparing teaching and advisors, risible. But sadly all too typical of your contributions in recent weeks.
Would you not the concede that the hours required of a special adviser are far in excess of those required of a teacher?
(Seeing as we’re just about half way through the 3 month long summer break).
And the skill set required, more or less specialized/advanced/rare?
(This is not a value judgement on the work that teachers do, just the simple reality of supply and demand).
What are the average hours of a special advisor, Bartley? I ask because you seem to know.
And what exactly are these advisors doing when they are putting in these long hours? I would genuinely like to know because I have great difficulty picturing what a special advisor might do on a day-to-day basis.
Also, do note Chet Carter’s post below. Very interesting, indeed.
Oh, and ‘y’know, all kinds of hard brainy political stuff like,’ doesn’t count as an explanation.
Indeed, if Irish politicians were true believers in the free market they would get far better advisers at half the price over from England. There are lots of bright young things who have graduated from Oxbridge who would welcome the chance to do their neo liberal thing in Ireland.
Bartley, of course, hasn’t a notion what they do or what they hours they work. Which is why he flailed about with that blather about teachers salaries though no-one had mentioned teachers at all. I sometimes think this forum is probably the only place where anyone passes heed on the poor lightweight.
The inordinate size of the salaries may in fact be directly connected to the evanescent nature of the duties involved. If the jobs are, as they appear to be, relatively meaningless the only way an adviser can proclaim his importance as by pointing the size of his pay.
In reality this is merely that time honoured tradition, ‘when I get into power, I’ll look after you,’ writ large. Appointing advisers is simply another way to distribute largesse and reward pals and supporters. One time they’d have put them on a drainage scheme board.
Quinn’s invocation of the 1973 coalition government to defend the appointment of advisers is a howl given how shockingly bad that administration was. Maybe it was an adviser who told Justin Keating it was a good idea for the state to purchase Bula Mines at four times the market value.
Top salaries have to be paid to attract the people with the appropriate skills.
-Lawmakers grilled HSBC executives and US Treasury officials for failing to guard against money laundering they said benefited Mexican drug lords and terrorist networks, and for their bypassing of US sanctions on Iran.
“It’s pretty shocking stuff,” subcommittee chairman Senator Carl Levin said-
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/hsbc-hid-16-bn-iran-transactions-us-senate-150417578.html
-HSBC is accused of “playing fast and loose with US banking rules” between 2004 and 2010 by US Senator Carl Levin, a key ally of US President Barack Obama, who chaired the team that published the report. Top NAMA adviser Michael Geoghegan was HSBC’s most senior executive for almost the entire period now under investigation.
The current AIB chairman was the bank’s chief operating officer between 2006 and 2008 and before that ran its Middle East business.-
http://www.finfacts.ie/irishfinancenews/article_1024639.shtml
Meanwhile at the IMF
Social welfare benefits are too high in Ireland and need to be revised to encourage people back to work, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/imf-calls-for-cut-in-dole-payments-559718.html
Are these special advisors on contract? So that if they earn E114,000. for one year, but they may not be employed the following year?
And so, these vast payments are in some odd way kind of recognition in that these salaries may contribute to some kind of ‘intellectual property’, i.e. the advice they give may flourish and continue to enhance policy and even eventually create civil service or private jobs, but they themselves may be out of a job after that year.
I just wonder if these special advisors and the advice each one give should be identified, to the voters, and should be elected instead of the idealess politicians? (but I do not really think these politicians are idealess; far from it).
Most are media types – they are advising R. Quinn et al. how to spin bad news and what kind of tie to wear for Prime Time.
I don’t know if you can copyright any of that.
@ Bartley, they must have very special, Special Advisers over in Ireland. SpADs who work for Government Ministers in Westminster do the job for about 40-60k depending on their experience. All they do is provide a political perspective to developing policy. Something which Civil servants can’t do being politically neutral. It is not a hard job and most of them are eager twenty somethings who come from think tanks where they were working for peanuts.
SpADs who work for Government Ministers in Westminster do the job for about 40-60k depending on their experience
The point is that most Irish public servants earn a significant pay premium over their UK counterparts.
I was simply bench-marking Irish special adviser pay in the context of high public sector pay over-all in this country, and especially within Minister Quinn’s own department.
Now if the suggestion is that all salaries paid out by the Department are normalized to British rates, that would make sense as a coherent argument.
But I don’t think that’s the suggestion on this thread, or that such a suggestion would ever gain any traction around this parish (the unique Irish circumstances, high cost of living, world-class teaching standards, challenges of teaching children with non-English-speaking parents, shorter school holidays etc. would all be cited in quick order)
It’s simply unrealistic to single-out one particular small group of state employees, who happen to be the subject of widespread public derision, and apply completely different standards of pay determination to them.
They’re not public employees, strictly speaking. They’re not recruited through the Public Appointments Service and they’re not recruited in an open and transparent manner. You’ll never see an add in the Jobs section of the IT looking for ministerial advisers. They are purely political animals and provide no service to the public, in any way whatsoever, and compariing them to other public servants is doing a great injustice to the latter and is actually a smear. Comparing a party hack advising a minister that cutting public services is OK and justifiable by reference to agreements with the Troika and a public servant trying to meet pressing and profound need against a background of mean and vindictive cutbacks, is nauseating. Indeed, many of these special advisers are clear enemies of the public sector and public servants. They are party hacks who need no qualifications to do their jobs, that they may have qualifications to the highest level is besides the point.
The pay of special advisers is the embodiment of how in Irish political life ‘who you know counts for much more than what you know’. And, furthermore, it demonstrates that little if anything has changed within the political bubble in the environs despite five years of crisis with no end in sight. Hacks and journos who display a steel when insisting that ‘the money’s just not there!’ when it comes to subsidising school books for low income families, then take an entirely relaxed view of advisers drawing down six figure salaries. It’s part of the game of Irish political-media interaction. The media publish stories about the advisers pay and efforts by ministers to increase same, but fundamentally they have no problem with huge salaries for ministers.
@CMK
With respect, being collegiate with other public servants isnt really the defining characteristic of being a public employee.
Neither is there having been an open & transparent appointment process, otherwise judges wouldnt be considered public employees.
Rather its the fact they are contracted to work for, and be paid by, the state apparatus.
On the question of the hours they keep, if you spent any time around government buildings over the past few weeks, you would have seen plenty of them in non-vacation mode. Now, there was no suggestion that teachers are crap, just an observation on the contrast between advisers burning the midnight oil, versus tumble-weeds blowing through our schools.
On what they actually do, that would be all manner of orchestration of stakeholders (otherwise known as cat-herding), input to policy formulation, background briefing, media out-reach, presentational advice (i.e. spin), unruffling of Ministerial feathers, and whatever else is required.
Whether you or I place any particular value on those activities, or the skill-set that underpins them, is less important from a pay determination point-of-view than the simple forces supply and demand.
The point is not to defend the special adviser caste, I would be as happy to issue the lot of them with P45s. The point was more that their pay-rates are clearly in-line with existing public sector norms.
Comparisons with the often heavily politicised system of judicial appointments is not going to help your argument.
On what they actually do, that would be all manner of orchestration of stakeholders (otherwise known as cat-herding), input to policy formulation, background briefing, media out-reach, presentational advice (i.e. spin), unruffling of Ministerial feathers, and whatever else is required.
So nothing the civil service doesn’t already do. Plus some waffly political party stuff. A bullshit sinecure, in other words.
Again, you a very vague about the actual hours worked. Allusions to some burning the midnight oil is unconvincing. It also leaves out that many teachers occupy management roles and are actually working the year round. Again, the comparison is risible and pure trolling on your part.
Well, Bartley, with equal respect but that’s bull-f**king-shit.
By the criteria you advance above ‘contracted to work for and paid for the state apparatus’ every private sector employee working on a state funded activity morphs into a public sector employee! That’s palpable nonsense. They’re not public sector workers; they’re political mercenaries who can then leverage their ‘access’ and knowledge of the political system to business when they have done their ‘time’ on what many of them clearly believe are poverty wages of 90-100 grand a year.
The vast, vast majority of public sector workers, particularly over the past fifteen years or so, have been recruited under open and transparent recruitment processes. Yes, some are there as sops to influential politicians but the vast majority without political ‘pull’ are there based on their qualifications and compentencies.
And as I said earlier, comparing special advisors to other public sector workers is nauseating. Special advisors contribute nothing, repeat nothing, to the lives of ordinary citizens. And it’s laughable to bring in the laws of supply and demand into this. If special advisors were recruited on the basis of qualifications and competencies, and in an open manner, there’d be no problem getting sufficient number at pay levels far lower than those currently in place. There is no ‘demand’ for special advisors beyond the intersection between a lack of ministerial self-confidence, suspicion of the civil service and the lobbying of individuals from business/media/academic who want to get a few years as an advisor under their belts into to propel their careers and enhance their marketability among the big players of capitalism in the finance industry, for example. They are primarily self-interested and where the role of special advisor compromises their perceived self-interest they move on to better and more lucrative pastures. Precisely the opposite approach, in fact, to public servants, particularly teachers, who continue to work in roles and try to improve the lives of those they work with, when doing so is compromising their health and well-being.
“tumble-weeds blowing through our schools”
Bartley, you c**t, you are Eilis O’Hanlon aren’t you, and your life’s mission is to denigrate those in society who are not privileged and therefore not entitled to your respect.
As the spouse of a typically hard-working teacher I find their characterisation as “tumble-weeds” absolutely beyond the pale.
Go regurgitate your bile elsewhere please.
Ditto. Anyone with any experience of the public schools system here knows that many teachers are run ragged through the school year with activities (incessant fundraising, for instance) on top of their teaching duties. I have to say that Bartley is contributing nothing to the CLR with his/her interventions. We’re living in a society being actively undermined and wrecked by the application of kinds of perspectives rooted in Bartley’s style of argumentation. I’m not finding anything that would challenge any of my positions, as a socialist, in Bartley’s contributions. If I want to catch up with the immensely destructive crackpot ‘realism’ of the orthodoxy I’ll read the Irish Times, the Sindo or the Independent. Having to wade through comment after comment of spurious argumentation becomes irritating after a while. On another thread ‘Bartley’ made the absolutely stupid equivalence between a muslim woman being attacked in Europe for wearing a headscarf and Mitt Romney getting a slagging over his underpants – someone making those kinds of points is not looking to be taken seriously. Doubly so with crap about tumbleweed blowing through schools.
@LATC
you c**t …
Gents, please, do lets try keep the discourse above the NSFW bar.
Its a simple matter of fact that teachers enjoy very substantial holidays. Honestly I struggle to see how saying that is beyond the pale. Its a fact familiar to every teacher, spouse-of-teacher, pupil, parent-of-pupil, and former-pupil in the land. Since when exactly did it become an un-sayable taboo?
The point was simply to explain part of the reason why special advisers earn more than most (but certainly not all) teachers.
@Rosencrantz
So nothing the civil service doesn’t already do.
Exactly.
(Though without the permanent-government slant, more with their wagon explicitly hitched to the current government).
So surely they should be paid comparably to civil servants they work with? Not more than, and in fact less than a considerable number of civil servants of comparable seniority. Seems to be in the right ball-park, compared to those pay rates that apply in that space.
Now, if we\’re saying those pay norms are out of whack, thats fine and an argument I could buy.
It also leaves out that many teachers occupy management roles and are actually working the year round.
Exactly.
And those teachers in leadership roles in medium and large schools, who do end up working all year round, are compensated appropriately (400 of them earning above €100k, as mentioned above).
Oh dear, Mark P was right about you all along.
First, you are against high pay in the public sector. Of course, ‘high pay’ for you is any amount of money paid over to any public sector employee at any level. You suppress this premiss because you want to troll. Like Marc Coleman, you selectively quote high paying positions and try to avail of a fallacy of composition in order to tar all public sector workers as overpaid layabouts.
I’ll be charitable and put it down to sloppiness on your part that you missed this:
If you’d been reading what I’ve written over the past six years you’d see one thing I was adamantly against was excessive salaries in the public sector.
I’d be of a similar view. In fact, I’d hazard to say that most posters here would be of the same view. Sinn Fein, for example, want to cap pay at €100k. This, to me, is a good start.
In your comparison with teachers, you argued that SpAds worked longer hours and so deserved as much if not more money. In particular, you argue the teachers are off doing sweet FA during the summer months.
You have now resiled from the above position. But you still assert, with little evidence beyond a claim that some ‘are burning the midnight oil’, that SpAds work as many if not longer hours. Again, the argument is flawed and an example of trolling on your part.
Further, you argued that the skill set is rare/the job demands effective people and, thus, supply and demand rules the salary scale. This is often the fig leaf used for high paying public sector positions (including judicial roles). However, this argument only works if there is an open competition i.e. you need to offer a high salary in order to attract a pool of candidates and select the best one. It is a waffly argument and one I attacked further above (albeit in the context of banking).
SpAds don’t work on this principle. They are hand picked by the minister, without any public competition or advertisement, on the basis of party affiliation and an ideological match. The Minister then goes to bat and asks if their hand-picked candidate can be paid a higher salary. This isn’t supply and demand; this is a spoils system being milked for all it is worth.
All of the above has been pointed out several times on this thread – I’ll be charitable again and presume that you have some difficulty with reading comprehension in order to miss that.
I love ‘if you spent any time around government buildings over the past few weeks.’
What were you doing? Delivering crisps to the Merrion?
@ Bartley, the lights burning at midnight in Leinster House were more than likely for the benefit of the cleaners, who are no doubt, on the minimum wage. If the SpAds were in the Dail at that time they were doing Party political work that should not be carried out at the taxpayers expense. Again, I say, if the SpAds salaries were cut by 50% Ministers would still have no problem getting bright young things to do the job. Come on Bartley, champion the free market, you know it makes sense.
“@ Bartley, the lights burning at midnight in Leinster House were more than likely for the benefit of the cleaners, who are no doubt, on the minimum wage.”
Evil bloody sponging cleaners. The minimum wage is too good for them, as any decent SpAD will probably tell you.
To be fair, I believe that young ambitious political advisers do work very hard. You can, at that age, with no ties, and for that matter, you have the incentive, sincere you’re on a career path which is financially very very rewarding. People who tell the rest of us that we should work harder often overlook this: that there’s a world of difference in different people’s situations.
Bartley,it would be great if you answered eamoncork’s question on exactly what these advisors do
They do . . . like . . . stuff.
And teachers are crap.
Who spend most of their time on holiday doing nothing.
Instead of ‘burning the midnight oil’, ‘outreach’ and ‘presentational advice.’ Real work.
Actually the whole Bartley thing is gone beyond a joke to be honest.
First they came for Mitt Romney’s underpants and I said nothing because they were not my underpants.
In fairness to ‘Bartley’, he’d probably rush to defend Mitt’s jocks, being possessed of a coherent set of political priorities, like. ‘An injury to Mitt’s jocks is an injury to all our jocks!!’
Whatever vital public service SpADs do, it clearly leaves them the time to compose cleverly-worded little missives in the pages of the IT and the SBP (and on the Internet) defending their existence.
Can I make a suggestion. Rather than engaging with Bartley, let us simply ignore the comments. A boycott in other words. He/she might eventually go away.
Strength comrades, boycott the troll!
Well if thats what it takes to stop you throwing more C-bombs my way LATC, have at it!
Though I do suspect had I lobbed the hateful gendered See-You-Next-Tuesday epithet in the other direction, it would have been grounds for an immediate banning by WbS.
I guess s/he can see into your heart, and know that of course it wasnt meant in any kind of misogynistic sense what-so-ever.
Ok, you’re a boring toe-rag. How’s that now – no trace of gender issues there, just an accurate description of your conduct and your online persona.
Yawn. Move along people, no sign of brain activity here.
Whether in education or elsewhere we should cap public sector salaries at €100,000. No exceptions. Where is this vaunted leadership from the great and the good. If this was the Titanic they would be no room in the lifeboats after the banksters and senior Civil Servants hogged the seats.Todays paper had news of a special redundancy deal for the high ups in CIE. Gravy for our betters and gruel for the rest.
And the unions collude. For example
Retired teachers (pets of the principal probably) being brought backto teach,Exam supervision and exam marking. Unemployed teachers should rise up.Relevant shop stewards should do something.
@Chet
Again, I say, if the SpAds salaries were cut by 50% Ministers would still have no problem getting bright young things to do the job. Come on Bartley, champion the free market, you know it makes sense.
Do you really want to open that Pandoras box?
You could say the same about all manner of other public sector positions, where credentialism, and tenure, and inside promotion tends to freeze out competition and inflate pay levels. Probably not something folks around this parish would too comfortable unpicking.
Again, all I was looking for is that the same principles in terms of pay determination are applied to the much-maligned special advisers. Just saying that we dont like them, a handful out of 300,000 public employees, is not enough to justify applying completely different logic to their compensation.
@CMK
By the criteria you advance above ‘contracted to work for and paid for the state apparatus’ every private sector employee working on a state funded activity morphs into a public sector employee!
No, that is simply not the legal position. A special adviser has a direct contractual relationship with the state as their employer. If someone working for a company building roads on behalf of the state is bullied by their boss, or summarily dismissed, they persue the company not the state through the courts. The opposite would be the case for a special adviser.
@Rosencrantz
Sinn Fein, for example, want to cap pay at €100k. This, to me, is a good start.
Caps are an extremely blunt instrument, and are often advocated by populist politicians in the sure and certain knowledge that the proposal will be popular with public sector workers as it would leave the majority untouched.
But lets imagine for a second such a cap was applied. Would anyone here be happy with a special adviser earning €99,999?
Caps are an extremely blunt instrument, and are often advocated by populist politicians in the sure and certain knowledge that the proposal will be popular with public sector workers as it would leave the majority untouched.
So you are against pay caps in the public sector? Even though you were arguing above that you’d be all for sorting out pay norms. Typical.
But lets imagine for a second such a cap was applied. Would anyone here be happy with a special adviser earning €99,999?
Such a pay cap would be a good start if it was adhered to.
Again, as has been pointed out countless times, SpAds occupy a qualitatively different role than other public sector roles. They are an example of a spoils system – it is a party handing out money to cronies. You keep ignoring this.
doesn’t the Netherlands have a cap of 100,000 euros its public sector?
I don’t now, but google tells me they have caps in the private health sector.
http://www.expatica.com/de/news/german-news/Dutch-healthcare-directors-may-face-pay-caps_53014.html
As I understand it, the institutes mentioned above are, strictly speaking, private sector.
I don’t know*, that should say.
Just out of interest, does the good Bartley think that teachers never burn the midnight oil in their jobs?
Note: I have all sorts of teachers and ex-teachers in my family, including my wife and my mother and I’m in a position to know otherwise.
No use engaging with the likes of Bartley in that way, ejh. He’s not worried about what people do, only about what they cost.
Fact is, the worst teacher, on her worst day, is worth more to society than any spin doctor on his best day.
Would it be that Bartley there IS a special advisor ? The bullshit that is being scattered all over this thread by him/her is surely in the spin mode of a party hack.
@ Tawdy, I am coming to the same conclusion. SpAds in Westminster are known to spend a lot of their time on political blogs pumping the party line. For much less money than Irish SpAds of course!
How many FG SpAds are there and can Bartley be identified?
I’d take LATC’s point (and add that while c**t is indeed unparliamentary language around these parts it was at least covered by asterisks, and no, it would not lead to a banning in that form whether Bartley or LATC used it though I’d strongly ask people to avoid using it) and second it about not engaging.
As I said earlier, I’ve come to the conclusion that pure stirring it appears to be the M.O. on here – particularly an apologia last week for those on highest incomes not paying the higher rate when those making substantially lower incomes might be doing so (ie paying the higher rate, as some here will be as PAYE tax payers, or as non PAYE tax payers and doing so uncomplainingly etc).
Once someone is trying to explain away the indefensible like that it’s fairly clear we’re talking about a level of disingenuousness which isn’t worth getting into. Is that a bannable offence? Not quite and not yet. But it does mean people should think long and hard before bothering themselves to engage.
A pity, this site is always open to ideas that aren’t of the left, and particularly ones that keep us honest, so to speak.
Re special advisers Chet/Tawdy, I’ve known advisers from three parties since 1994. I can’t say I’ve ever felt that whatever their particular individual qualities that they brought any particularly unusual level of expertise to the table. Most appeared to be media savvy, but not to an amazing degree, and as the experience of sequentially DL, LP and GP (and now LP again) demonstrates there’s only so much that media savvy can bring to the feast. In regards to areas of interest, say (taking human rights or some such as an example), while that was of interest I’ve also seen where it could be overly focussed to the exclusion of other aspects of a Ministerial brief.
In other words most people with a reasonable head on their shoulders could do the job, there’s no clear qualifications that are essential and while I’m certainly not against the idea and I’m strongly in favour of an extra voice in the room when it comes to Ministerial decision making I do have a problem with extravagant salaries (which by any metric these are).
Agreed, SpAds are a useful tool in the Government decision making process. Civil Servants do not get much access to the Minister so the SpAd acts as a useful substitute. They are the Ministers voice in their absence. Anyone from the Ministers political party can do this and they need no special skills. Hence, it is generally agreed that their salary should be commensurate with their role, that of a mid ranking civil servant 40-60k and certainly not that of a senior civil servant who has to run an entire Department.
Definitely agree re salary.
Me: “One planned advisor did walk when he couldn’t get the deal he wanted. [...] I wonder is it significant that he had been in a public sector job.”
doctorfive: “Don’t think so. Few others have left too.”
Well, some of those others seemed to have left for pastures greener, where as Deenhihans went back to the old day job.
doctorfive: “ Howlin, the one to set and enforce the cap broke it for his. Another from within Labour, adviser to Quinn while he was leader.”
‘cept that guy had been in a lucrative job outisde the public sector immediuately before going to advise Howlin (in one of the accountancy bodies, effectively their lobbyist).
The Irish model?
http://order-order.com/2012/07/18/spad-flation-breaks-coalition-agreement/