Sir, – Kevin Doherty’s letter (“Public sector has consistently failed to deliver but feels entitled to better pay”, October 3rd) makes a basic but unsupported leap: because public-sector pay is a large part of Government expenditure, he implies that public-sector pay is responsible for failures in our public services.
That does not follow. First, our public services rank highly in comparison to other states while also remaining cognisant that significant improvements are still required.
Second, public sector pay is a cost of employing the people who deliver those services; it is not, in itself, an explanation for inadequate capacity.
No evidence is offered to establish that connection or to show that holding down public servants’ pay would reduce waiting lists, ease emergency department overcrowding, increase housing supply or expand classroom capacity.
RM Block
Furthermore, it should be noted that public-sector pay deals have historically set pay levels below the rise of inflation with the last pay deal similar – contrary to Government declarations and espoused by Cabinet ministers.
The capacity issues raised by Doherty are fundamentally issues of capacity, planning, staffing, infrastructure and the allocation and use of resources. The public servants working in our hospitals, schools, Garda stations and public offices are the people dealing with these pressures every day. They did not create the demand they are being asked to meet.
If Government expenditure is failing to produce the required improvements, the appropriate question is whether sufficient capacity has been planned and whether resources are being allocated and utilised effectively.
Reducing the pay of the people providing those services would reduce the cost of employment, but it would not create hospital beds, housing units, classrooms or additional staff.
Nor would it address the underlying causes of inadequate capacity. Indeed, retention of staff within already-stretched public services is becoming a significant crisis, particularly in the health service.
The reference to child poverty is particularly striking. It is difficult to argue that child poverty is a national crisis while simultaneously suggesting that restraint should be imposed on the incomes of working public servants.
Many public servants are themselves ordinary working households facing the same pressures of housing, childcare, energy and living costs as everyone else. Reducing their real incomes cannot credibly be presented as a response to poverty; for lower-paid workers, it risks making financial hardship worse.
If tackling child poverty is the objective, the focus should be on policies that increase household incomes and reduce the costs families face, rather than treating public servants’ pay as a convenient source of savings.
There is certainly a legitimate debate to be had about productivity, accountability, grading structures and value for money.
But that debate should be evidence-based and should distinguish between the cost of staffing a service and the capacity of that service to meet demand. Ordinary public servants should not be presented as the cause of problems not of their own making.
If Government has failed to provide sufficient capacity to meet demand, the focus should be on identifying and correcting that failure, not on making public servants pay the price for it. – Yours, etc,
STEVEN MCCARTHY,
Mullingar,
Co Westmeath.
