Plans to help the Economy - posters suggestions.

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csirl

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Starting a new thread seeking peoples ideas on how to help the economy and keep us the Government out of debt.

6 things that the Government could do to help us back on our feet.

  • Abolish the HSE.
Lay off the 120k staff lock stock and barrel. Pass employment risk back to the hospital managements, set up a service level agreement with each and payment dependant on adherence to it. Dept of Health, who appear to have very little to do at the moment, can perform the monitoring, regulation and tendering roles and are adequately resourced to do so.

Reasons: Cut costs and making service to public more efficient. Significantly reduced tax burden.


  • Abolish most local authorities.
According to recently published Green Paper on local government reform we have 114 local authorities in this country (29 County Councils, 5 City Councils, 80 Town Councils). This is a joke for a country of only 4.25million. There should be at most 1 local authority per county and there is a case for having some local authorities covering a number of smaller counties

Reasons: Cut costs and making service to public more efficient. Significantly reduced tax & rates burden. Significantly reduced administrative burden.


  • Reform of Legal Profession.
Our legal profession is organised in an archaic way. The barriers between barristers and solicitors need to be broken down. Barristers should be allowed form firms or join legal firms. The regulation and education of the professions needs to be separated with the education opened up – there should be multiple educational institutions qualifying legal professionals in multiple ways thus reducing barriers to entry into the professions.

Reasons: A more competitive and flexible legal profession will significantly reduce legal costs, which are a big issue for most businesses. Will also lead to a more efficient resolution of disputes thus making it easier to do business in Ireland.


  • Skill Up Workforce.
More money needs to be invested in persuading our workforce to get as educated as possible. A well educated workforce attracts higher worth employment that is impacted less by production costs. Teenagers need to be encouraged to finish school and get a third level qualification. Workers need to be encouraged to return to education. Most importantly, there needs to be more facilities to encourage people to train to alleviate skill shortages e.g. IT, financial services, medical profession, nanotechnology etc.

Reasons: A genuinely highly educated and flexible workforce will attract high worth industries thus reducing unemployment and increasing tax income for the Government.


  • Infrastructure.
The NDP needs to be done more quickly, not delayed. This should be a priority. All the State agencies involved in its delivery need a shake-up. World leading experts should be brought in to deliver the projects e.g. Swiss people to run the railways. The giving of contracts to international companies with a track record in delivery of large projects e.g. an entire underground system, an entire road system etc. should replace the piecemeal giving of small contracts to local firms with poor records of delivery.

Reason: Better infrastructure will attract business and employees.


  • Reform Welfare.
Having 100,000s of people on welfare at a time when 10% of the workforce has to be imported makes no sense. People who are able to work should be working. There should be more back to work schemes and stricter application of seeking work rules with regard to welfare recipients. Those who refuse to re-enter the workforce should not get paid. Mandatory training courses should be provided to those with few skills.

Reason: Significantly reduced tax burden as every person on welfare is a significant drain on State resources. Increases the number of taxpayers.
 
Conveyancing knocked on the head as sole remit of solicitors, Money for old rope during the boom in my opinion!
 
In Australia you have to work for the dole. It should be the same here. For a start, Dublin is filthy. They can collect litter and wash the street.

/This type of thing should free up a lot of council jobs/force people to seek employment
 
1: Lead by example and not just forego their planned payrises but take a 10% pay cut as well

2: install a proper performance based pay system in the public sector

3: Scrap benchmarking and install a pay freeze in all Public sector jobs bar those earning more then €30kpa (I'm being nice to the lower paid)

4: "Sell" all outstanding uncollected fines to a debt collection agency if they have not been paid within 6 months

5: complete review of state assets to ascertain if they know what they state actually owns and then either sell of what is not needed or only use these assets for building things like new prisons etc. Surelt the state had a couple of hundred acres they could have used for Mountjoys replacement instead of paying a fortune for land
 
Mpsox said:
1: Lead by example and not just forego their planned payrises but take a 10% pay cut as well

2: install a proper performance based pay system in the public sector

3: Scrap benchmarking and install a pay freeze in all Public sector jobs bar those earning more then €30kpa (I'm being nice to the lower paid)
Click to expand...

this has no chance at all of happening im afraid
 
Flax said:
In Australia you have to work for the dole. It should be the same here. For a start, Dublin is filthy. They can collect litter and wash the street.

/This type of thing should free up a lot of council jobs/force people to seek employment
Click to expand...


that is just a fantastic idea. no reason whatsoever why they cudnt do it. but they wont, they are not pro active enough
 
csirl said:
Lay off the 120k staff lock stock and barrel.[/quote]

I wonder what impact this would have on the tax take (120k less paying tax), and on welfare payouts, I suppose overall it might be cash neutral or better though, in the short term anyway, assuming they get statutory redundancy, or no redundancy.
Click to expand...
 
I wonder what impact this would have on the tax take (120k less paying tax), and on welfare payouts, I suppose overall it might be cash neutral or better though, in the short term anyway, assuming they get statutory redundancy, or no redundancy.
Click to expand...

I would advocate statutory redundancy only, nothing more and no reason why we should pay more. The better ones would be hired directly by the hospitals, but not on public sector contracts (this 120k includes hospital employees paid out of HSE payroll). The rest would be competing with the laid off local authority employees for jobs in McDonalds and Spar etc. that are currently being done imported non-EU workers (we could stop importing for a short while & cancel work permits for unskilled labour). :)

Seriously, in tandem with the welfare restrictions, there will be plenty of incentives for these ex-public sector workers to get retrained to do another job in an area of skilled shortage. Yes, short term there will be some impact on the exchequer, but long term it will work out well. In spite of downturn, the economy is still dependant on importing workers, so there must be employment opportunities out there. Mind you, some, particularly in middle and upper management will be in for a shock - will have to work for their money and lower their expectations.
 
Can I add a couple of suggestions to the list of inefficiencies

- the proliferation of quango's and some serious questions around the appointment of members to state boards/bodies etc ... jobs for the lads
- ministers of state , oireachtas committees who deliver nothing apart from nice expenses and a payrise for its members, an oireachtas which passes legislation that might involve sitting for more than 92 days per year ...

There are many great suggestions on this thread ... sadly most require a) leadership b) political will ....... and worse the combination of both, Real political leadership


Back to reality !!!
 
While I support the efforts of posters to get the economy back on track, and think some of the suggestions have merit, I would question whether they will ever happen, as, as Humdinger suggests, the suggestions require real political leadership. Also, Government needs to know the people need and want change and as we will have the same Government from 1997 - 2012, they are not getting this message..
 
csirl said:
[*]Abolish the HSE.
[/LIST]Lay off the 120k staff lock stock and barrel.
Click to expand...


Not a bad post overall, but to be honest this idea is crazy. You cannot just sack every employee in the health service. Are you going to turf the sick, the dying and the infirm out onto the streets while this Great Leap Forward is underway?
 
Not a bad post overall, but to be honest this idea is crazy. You cannot just sack every employee in the health service. Are you going to turf the sick, the dying and the infirm out onto the streets while this Great Leap Forward is underway?
Click to expand...

You give the hospitals notice that this is happening - maybe 3-6 months - so that they can directly hire whatever medical staff they need to perform whatever public service contracts they have. My guess would be that the majority of medical people would get hired - hospitals would use the exercise to not re hire any wasters - however, the majority of HSE admin staff wouldnt. The main issue here is that the hospitals will be managing their own employees rather than the State taking the employment risk.
 
csirl said:
You give the hospitals notice that this is happening - maybe 3-6 months - so that they can directly hire whatever medical staff they need to perform whatever public service contracts they have. .............hospitals will be managing their own employees and would have to ensure efficiencies i.e. that the ratio of admin staff is lower, and medical staff higher, in order to perform their contracts and get well paid.
Click to expand...


Sounds like "near privitisation"
 
csirl said:
You give the hospitals notice that this is happening - maybe 3-6 months - so that they can directly hire whatever medical staff they need to perform whatever public service contracts they have. My guess would be that the majority of medical people would get hired - hospitals would use the exercise to not re hire any wasters - however, the majority of HSE admin staff wouldnt. The main issue here is that the hospitals will be managing their own employees rather than the State taking the employment risk.
Click to expand...

And who is going to underwrite the financial risks faced by each hospital, particularly the ones that skimp on hiring admin staff and risk being defrauded as a result?

What you are proposing has been tried already in several areas of State administration as what are termed Public Private Partnerships. They are commonplace in the UK and increasingly so here. Opinion is divided as whether PPPs work. Many people, myself included, suspect that they are vehicles for inefficiency and corruption.
 
Have a referendum to remove the neutrality clause from the constitution. Sell Leitrim to the Americans or Russians to use as a missile base.

Legalise all forms of drugs as long as the government are selling them. Open licensed drug cafes.

Get rid of car tax and third party insurance - add 50c to the cost of petrol and diesel to cover this.

Abolish local government everywhere. Make anyone that wants anything queue at one of four regional centres. All planning decisions to be outsourced to Germany where they can only apply the rules as layed down in the relevant acts.

Privatise the NRA and the road network. Give them a fixed budget each year and let them get on with it. Anything over and above that, they have to introduce tolls.

Turn Roscommon into a giant paintball theme park.

Increase the primary school starting age to seven years old like it is in Switzerland.

Increase the old age pension age to sixty-seven.

Abolish all closed shops - solicitors, barristers, doctors, consultants, dentists, grave-diggers.

Hire a few thousand Hungarian doctors and dentists, give them a geographic location for their clinic and a setup grant and let them get on with it.

Introduce a property tax on empty homes.

Abolish mortgage interest relief, rent relief, investor interest relief, section 23, hotels relief, nursing home relief and all the other daft property reliefs.

Put DAFT in charge of the Affordable Housing scheme. Paid by each person who takes up a house. Anyone who refuses to be housed after six months can go and sort themselves out.

Introduce mandatory state pensions for all classes of worker (public and private). All existing pension funds to be expropriated for the purposes of these funds to the value of the tax relief that they contain. The remainder to be turned into an investment fund that is taxed as normal and is available to the person whenever they want to cash it in. Add fivepence to the basic rate to pay for this.

Draw up a list of every manager in the HSE. Make half of them redundant at random. Do the same for all other classes of staff, but only make a quarter of them redundant. The rest get a 10% pay rise for the extra work they will be doing, reviewed at the end of the year.

Vote for me.
 
1. Break up the unions
2. Privatise ESB and Bord Gais
But don't introduce any poll/property taxes.
 
csirl said:
Starting a new thread seeking peoples ideas on how to help the economy and keep us the Government out of debt.

6 things that the Government could do to help us back on our feet.

  • Abolish the HSE.
Lay off the 120k staff lock stock and barrel. Pass employment risk back to the hospital managements, set up a service level agreement with each and payment dependant on adherence to it. Dept of Health, who appear to have very little to do at the moment, can perform the monitoring, regulation and tendering roles and are adequately resourced to do so.

Reasons: Cut costs and making service to public more efficient. Significantly reduced tax burden.


  • Abolish most local authorities.
According to recently published Green Paper on local government reform we have 114 local authorities in this country (29 County Councils, 5 City Councils, 80 Town Councils). This is a joke for a country of only 4.25million. There should be at most 1 local authority per county and there is a case for having some local authorities covering a number of smaller counties

Reasons: Cut costs and making service to public more efficient. Significantly reduced tax & rates burden. Significantly reduced administrative burden.


  • Reform of Legal Profession.
Our legal profession is organised in an archaic way. The barriers between barristers and solicitors need to be broken down. Barristers should be allowed form firms or join legal firms. The regulation and education of the professions needs to be separated with the education opened up – there should be multiple educational institutions qualifying legal professionals in multiple ways thus reducing barriers to entry into the professions.

Reasons: A more competitive and flexible legal profession will significantly reduce legal costs, which are a big issue for most businesses. Will also lead to a more efficient resolution of disputes thus making it easier to do business in Ireland.


  • Skill Up Workforce.
More money needs to be invested in persuading our workforce to get as educated as possible. A well educated workforce attracts higher worth employment that is impacted less by production costs. Teenagers need to be encouraged to finish school and get a third level qualification. Workers need to be encouraged to return to education. Most importantly, there needs to be more facilities to encourage people to train to alleviate skill shortages e.g. IT, financial services, medical profession, nanotechnology etc.

Reasons: A genuinely highly educated and flexible workforce will attract high worth industries thus reducing unemployment and increasing tax income for the Government.


  • Infrastructure.
The NDP needs to be done more quickly, not delayed. This should be a priority. All the State agencies involved in its delivery need a shake-up. World leading experts should be brought in to deliver the projects e.g. Swiss people to run the railways. The giving of contracts to international companies with a track record in delivery of large projects e.g. an entire underground system, an entire road system etc. should replace the piecemeal giving of small contracts to local firms with poor records of delivery.

Reason: Better infrastructure will attract business and employees.


  • Reform Welfare.
Having 100,000s of people on welfare at a time when 10% of the workforce has to be imported makes no sense. People who are able to work should be working. There should be more back to work schemes and stricter application of seeking work rules with regard to welfare recipients. Those who refuse to re-enter the workforce should not get paid. Mandatory training courses should be provided to those with few skills.

Reason: Significantly reduced tax burden as every person on welfare is a significant drain on State resources. Increases the number of taxpayers.
Click to expand...

1 and 6 Norman Tebbit esque Vodoo economic nonsence. 2 3 4 5 I am with you on.
 
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