Shake up how the country is managed!

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ninsaga

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I'm not in the public service - so I don't know how the 'system works'. I don't really follow politics either. But I am become increasingly dumbstruck on how we pay our managers to run the country. They are more formally known as Ministers for (insert department) & our civil servants.... but I refer to call them managers.... they are paid to manage Ireland Inc & are not doing a good job!
In the private sector, if a manager cannot account for what spend they are responsible for then they are shown the door. If they cannot effectively project or plan for the future then likewise.
Managers also need to manage expenditure - keep their house in order.

So why havn't out managers being doing this?

Over the last few years, Ireland Inc made buckets of money & our managers squadered it on electronic voting machines & subsequent storage of the equipment, allowed unquestioned spending levels in the likes of FAS & gave themselves nice payrises last year..... the list goes on.

Why oh why don't our managers lead by example &.........
- take significant pay cuts themselves (not just token levels)
- clamp down on department expendature (like massive allowances for posting out crap to their constituents)
- use the government jet for critical needs (as opposed to €8k per hour when flippantly used)
- cut high pensions for prev managers who although left the parties but returned to their own businesses or the private sector
- cut down on the number of managers - the amount we have in proportion to the UK for example is much higher

......... seems kinda obvious.....
 
Seems kinda obvious to me not to keep voting them into office.
 
But I think the 'system' contributes to this also.... no matter who was voted in over the last few years who was really going to get a grip on spending & put aside for 'the rainy day'. The country ran out of money very fast..... boom to bust in a few months with the managers standing around holding their di*ks looking at each other & wondering what the hell just happened.
The opposition parties just throwing crap in the dail ...... just going through the motions as far as I can see.
 
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If there would be managers performance on the same level as the goverment is currently showing in my company they would first have been on a peformance improvement plan and than shown the door without large payments. It's employment at the will of the employer.

The problem with "democracy" in the way we currently have it implemented is that it gives the employer (speak us) not the right to fire at will, we are limited to do that on a time schedule that can only be altered by the employee (speak the goverment).

We have no opportunity to fire our goverment when we had enough of their actions (or non action in this case) and we certainly can not hold them accountable if they do not deliver on the promisses they made during the hiring (election phase).

I think that democracy in the way it is implemented at present is wrong and leads to politicans that are not in any way encouraged to actualy do a job.

We need to have more direct voter interaction on a local level like they have in Appenzell (Switzerland) and on a national level via initiative and referendum and given that sometimes we get unelected leaders (like the current one) we also should have the right to recall that leader.

Our County Council needs to be reformed to allow more voter interaction, and the dail (or as I call it the glorified county council of Ireland) needs to be elected more often (maybe 1/2 of it every 2 years).
 
Good post DublinTexas. I always vote (I feel strongly about this as in some countries some citizens are still denied the right to vote, but thats another thread I'm sure) but I feel deep down our politicians all peddle the same brand of crap to us in the end.
 
What ever about us not being able to fire our government then surely the buck stops with the Taoiseach. He is responsible for picking the right individual out of the crew elected & tasking them with Department ownership..... such as saying to Willie O'Dea, Mary Coughlan, Brian Lenihan etc...."you are responsible for running this 'business', you ensure that you can account for all spend & policy decisions..... if you screw it up then you are off the job & back benched on back bench salary!...... if you cannot do this job then step aside & I'll put someone else in there'.........likewise for every minister.

There is no sense that this approach has ever been taken or that it will change.
 
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ninsaga said:
I'm not in the public service - so I don't know how the 'system works'. I don't really follow politics either. But I am become increasingly dumbstruck on how we pay our managers to run the country. They are more formally known as Ministers for (insert department) & our civil servants.... but I refer to call them managers.... they are paid to manage Ireland Inc & are not doing a good job!
In the private sector, if a manager cannot account for what spend they are responsible for then they are shown the door. If they cannot effectively project or plan for the future then likewise.
Managers also need to manage expenditure - keep their house in order.

So why havn't out managers being doing this?

Over the last few years, Ireland Inc made buckets of money & our managers squadered it on electronic voting machines & subsequent storage of the equipment, allowed unquestioned spending levels in the likes of FAS & gave themselves nice payrises last year..... the list goes on.

Why oh why don't our managers lead by example &.........
- take significant pay cuts themselves (not just token levels)
- clamp down on department expendature (like massive allowances for posting out crap to their constituents)
- use the government jet for critical needs (as opposed to €8k per hour when flippantly used)
- cut high pensions for prev managers who although left the parties but returned to their own businesses or the private sector
- cut down on the number of managers - the amount we have in proportion to the UK for example is much higher

......... seems kinda obvious.....
Click to expand...

Good post. A foreign businessman who ran a large company here once remarked to me that Ireland reminded him ( and the others at the top of the multinational ) of a third world country. I was shocked when he said that....but I now understand how many others abroad perceive us. Remember the speech the German ambassador made in Dublin ( at the Point I think it was ? ) a few years ago....even then, that was a flavour of what was being said by some, behind our backs. He was ridiculed by most people in Ireland at the time, but he was proved right. I would love to know what he would have said in a speech which was not public, scripted in advance or on the record.

Look at the pay our taoiseach gets ...its more than the president of the U.S. , France , Germany or the prime minister of the UK. A leader should lead by example. The rot and corruption starts from the top down. The head of our central bank gets paid more than the equivalent in the U.S.A., which has 100 times the population and is the worlds leading / biggest economy!
The fact the international financial community perceives us ( and penalises us with premium interest rates on our borrowings ) as the riskiest country in Europe to lend to, and riskier than many countries elsewhere in the world, speaks volumes.
 
rabbit said:
Look at the pay our taoiseach gets ...its more than the president of the U.S. , France , Germany or the prime minister of the UK. A leader should lead by example. The rot and corruption starts from the top down. The head of our central bank gets paid more than the equivalent in the U.S.A., which has 100 times the population and is the worlds leading / biggest economy!
The fact the international financial community perceives us ( and penalises us with premium interest rates on our borrowings ) as the riskiest country in Europe to lend to, and riskier than many countries elsewhere in the world, speaks volumes.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

It is beyond belief that our taoiseach is paid more than the US president. It must be down to his leadership skills.
Will anything change? Nope. We'll keep whinging about it and then just put up with it, as usual.
 
Alot of talented people wouldn't touch Politics with a barge poll, My theory is that people that are unemployable anywhere else and have alot of time on their hands are drawn to run for office.

If an estate agent,solicitor or accountant runs then you have to query their motives.

We are governed by a small genepool of people willing to go into politics. Plenty of nepotism too so bad habbits are passed down from generation to generation.

We just have to make do with what we have. unfortunetly.
 
ninsaga said:
In the private sector, if a manager cannot account for what spend they are responsible for then they are shown the door. If they cannot effectively project or plan for the future then likewise.
Click to expand...
And there's the big flaw in your argument. The public sector is by no means perfect (and I share your concerns about electronic voting in particular), but to position the public and private sectors as two completely different beasts has no basis. Here's just one example of the super-effective, super-efficient private sector;

We tenders for a small piece of architectural design work recently, about €5k-€10k approx, and got 15 responses. 10 out of the 15 tenders failed to get over the first hurdle of minimum qualifying criteria, because they didn't read the tender. Some omitted CVs, some omitted VAT details, some didn't build in expenses into their price etc. So 2/3rds of the responses from the private sector (including some from known names in the industry, who have been around for yonks, and will continue to be round for yonks) were wasting their time and hours.

From past experience, some of these guys will ask for feedback about why they didn't get the contract (some don't seem too bothered, mind you), they will get stroppy when you tell them bluntly that they didn't provide the information requested, so it wasn't possible to evaluate their tenders. They will ask 'why didn't you give me a call' and they will pretend not to understand when you point out that an open and transparent process means that all bidders get treated equally. The care and attention given to a tender is usually a fair indicator of the care and attention that will be given to the job in question.

So there may well be a need to shake up many aspects of how business is done in both the public and private sectors.
 
I agree with all of that.
As has been said many times on AAM the engine of the economy is the private sector and should be the SME sector. The reality is that we, as a nation, are not good enough at what we do to compete internationally. I know an Irish born builder in California who will not employ Irish tradesman as they are not skilled enough, have a bad work ethic and won’t do what they are told (“ah, sure it’s good enough”). I have extensive experience dealing with Irish, American, German and Dutch engineers over the last 10 years and while the Americans are clearly the best the Irish are (with a few notable exceptions) not in the same league as the rest of them.
On a broader level the service level from American suppliers is far better than Irish ones. On a personal level the general lack of courtesy, professionalism and competence from shop assistants, banks, airport staff, the police and state bodies it striking in comparison to any other Western country I have been in.

There are problems in the public sector, in general pay levels are too high and sweeping reform is necessary but the same thing can also be said about most of the private sector. The difference is that the state sector can only be changed by political action, and getting back on topic I don’t understand why this is; it seems that while secretaries of departments are paid as managers they are just administrators with no real power to effect change.

So, the real question; who’s in charge of each department?
Is it the minister, think of him/her as a director, or is it the secretary, think of him/her as the manager.
If the director doesn’t like how the manager is doing their job can he/she sack them? If the manager wants to change things can/will the director stop them?
In most businesses there is a managing director... who’s the managing director in each department?

None of the above questions will matter if the private sector cannot get its act together. All the talk about the knowledge economy over the last 5-10 years has been just that; talk. We are still way behind most of the high-cost competition when it comes to the quality and technical excellence of the products and services we offer. That’s the real question and the issue that the government needs to address if we are not to slide down the list of wealthy and successful countries in the world.
 
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