@David Corrigan: The big question is who is sf accountable to.

@Tim: All our political parties are accountable to the people of Ireland Tim.

@David Corrigan: I believe we pay, still, in our taxes to cover a couple of private insurance companies who screwed people over.

@David Corrigan: but when you say protected what do you mean? What is unprotected? How would SF leave the banking sector unprotected and what would the consequences be of SF not protecting our banking sector? Labour promised not to bail out the banks. I’ll just leave that there.

@Tim: The GFA was 23 years ago. Let me paint a picture: 1944 was 23 years after the IRA and Britain declared a truce in 1921. 1921 was also the year in which Oscar Traynor, serving as Minister for Defence in 1944, oversaw the burning of the Custom House. 23 years is not a short time in politics, and ALL political parties in Ireland have ‘weaponised’ histories… I’m not a SF supporter, but when something smells a certain way it generally does emanate from a bull…

@GrumpyAulFella: Protected = bailed out. I have no idea what SF would do as they have not been in government yet.
If SF do what Labour did then they deserve to be punished like Labour. Labour were held accountable and rightly so. We just need to spread those rules across the whole political system. FF and FG consistently fail when in power but they still wrangle their way back in.
Merging after the last election was their final play though. They can’t pretend they are different anymore.

@David Corrigan: Your example of people getting hurt in HSE care will never be eliminated unfortunately regardless of how accountable people are made to be. I’d be willing to bet that everyone including myself and yourself has made an error at work at some point or another. The difference is that my mistake or yours can mostly be identified quite quickly and rectified without any major consequences. That’s not the case with a surgeon or an obstetrician unfortunately, where even minor errors of judgement can lead to life long consequences for their patients.

@David Corrigan: ask yourself the question, why they get back in. We’ve had the Greens, we’ve had the PDs, we’ve had Labour, we’ve had masses of independents all in power. Did they make a difference? In fact they were arguably worse than the current coalition. SF are the outliers. 2 in 3 of the voting public don’t want them due to their fairytale policies, appalling record up North and suspect characters in their midst. We need real opposition, a new party to emerge with real alternative policies instead of fairytale populist promises and sound bites.

@GrumpyAulFella: So we continue as we are then? Continue with running the country into the ground. We have the potential to be a GREAT country but our political system has no interest in pushing for that.
SF are the last of the untried in this country. They will be given their chance soon enough the way things are going. If they fail, then there really is no hope for this Godforsaken kip.

@GrumpyAulFella: Not in the slightest a S.F supporter and god only knows what they would do in power but in regards to the carry on of the Banks in this country is nothing short of disgraceful. They were bailed out by our national pension fund to the tune of 80bn (where now most people won’t get a pension til 70) plus an ongoing USC and yet they continue to charge almost 2% above the EU average for mortgage and will never pay that money back to the state even though they are making billions every year. Bear that in mind, every man woman and child in this country contributed 16000 each plus all the USC to private institutions and not only are they allowed to get away scot free without paying back a penny they are allowed to carry on as before with impunity with the assured backing of our govt. Not only this they put up massive roadblocks to any new financial institutions coming into this country to make a bit of decent competition in the market with the threat that it would ” seriously undermine the Irish banking sector”. The Irish banking sector needs to be seriously undermined, it needs to be held accountable for its nothing short of fraudulent carry on in the past and it also needs a lot larger degree of separation from members of the main govt parties

@David Corrigan: ‘god forsaken kip’ Get a grip. Have a look around the globe. Ireland. Land of the moaners.

@slfc21: We are talking about Ireland. Nothing to do with the rest of the world. There must be cartoons or something on the telly that would entertain you this morning?

@Michael McGrath: Spot on Michael.

@David Corrigan: Godforsaken kip??? Very un-Republican of you. I’ll always love this country no matter who is at the helm, yes even SF. SF will never have an overall majority but they may get into a coalition. They are untried because people don’t want them. That’s democracy for you and it will take some time before sensible voters would swing in the direction of having ministers of the calibre of Cullinane, O’Broin and O’Snodaigh, thankfully. SF isn’t the answer. We need an alternative.

@GrumpyAulFella: But in fairness they have to get their chance, I don’t know what kind of a job they will do but we have had either Fg or Ff in power or some version of them since the foundation of the state. After 100 yrs surely the time has come to give someone else a chance.
The public will decide next election.

@David Corrigan: Someone who works in the public service once told me that if you made 9 good decisions and one bad one, the one bad decision would count against you for promotion. A person who never made any decision would get the promotion. So management are all people like that and they promote people like that.

@GrumpyAulFella: Like I said, Ireland has the potential to be a great country. Unfortunately, due to how its managed it is now a kip. High cost of living and no services.
We have a good education system and our people obviously do a great job for the likes of Intel etc. The potential is there but our resources are mismanaged by the likes of FF and FG.

@Bert Carolan: My father worked for the public service for over 30 years. He saw one time where a fella was promoted as he was a yes man to his manager. HIs manager would get promoted and drag the yes man up each time i.e. following him up the ranks.

The yes man couldn’t read or write.

@David Corrigan: My first real job was in Public service, only waited two years. Was young and not there long enough to really see the culture. I left because my boss was only a few years older than me. Who knows I might have been still there if he’d been older. You never know.

@GrumpyAulFella: Off you go then start your own party that will offer opposition to sf but not the legacies of FFG!

@Angela McCarthy: sure Mary Lou and Chris Andrews are FF anyway.

@David Corrigan: that’s just bluster though. High cost of living is heavily influenced by global factors and our high wage compensate for that to a large degree. You say no services but don’t specify so this is just more populist rhetoric, a hallmark of SF. Look up north. Poor welfare system, pension is a pittance, employment dominated by public sector, health service on its knees right now and a housing crisis worse than ours all with SF at the wheel. They can’t keep hiding behind the “untried” mantra. We see them in action every day and it’s not pretty.

@GrumpyAulFella: Why is SF always a binary option to FF or FG? Let’s discuss how the entire political community should approach this cross-party. You touch on it with your mention of Labour. If this isn’t a view shared by all in political spectrum then there will always be room for big lobby, sleaze and cronyism. I think the people of Ireland have matured massively in their political knowledge and engagement in the past few years and the next election should be positioned on political accountability for public services, projects and ultimately better oversight of tax spend.

@David Corrigan: yes I am a child. Good one.

@David Corrigan: and yes we are talking about Ireland. But there is a thing called perspective. Maybe try it.

@David Corrigan: every single branch of the public service is accountable to their own registration board or council . They are also accountable to their direct managers and as such must be target oriented. I’m a teacher . My work is overseen by my board of management, parents , the teaching council and the ever present inspectorate . Your comments show no knowledge of how the public service works . Your arguments are tired populist out of date and misinformed. If you are going to post on social media simply for likes you’ll do well with this approach. If you want to make an informed point with this approach you’ll get nowhere .

@Conor Flood: You’re actually proving the point, though. Nobody is blaming frontline staff in these examples, but middle and upper management. The fact that you have to answer to three separate bodies, the board of management, the teacher’s council and the inspectorate – all of whom I have no doubt are cumulatively paid enough to fund an entire new school – is exactly what people mean when we criticise public service dysfunction.

Nobody is denying that management is necessary, the issue stems from the ongoing paradigm in Ireland in which pay for people who sit behind computers or clipboards and work entirely in logistical fields continues to outstrip pay for those who do the actual grunt work – teachers, doctors, nurses, Gardaí, you name it.

Nobody in the education system should receive a higher salary than the people who actually sit in the classrooms teaching the kids. Nobody in the health system should receive a higher salary than the people who actually, directly diagnose, prescribe medication to, operate on, look after during recovery, etc, actual patients in need of healthcare. Nobody in the justice system should be paid more than the people who actually patrol the streets, respond to call-outs, prepare books of evidence, piece together clues to ascertain who committed a crime, etc etc etc.

We happen to be on the same page here I suspect. How many more teachers, or resources, could your school afford if there were fewer people in the education system who sit behind computers all day and never interact with an actual student?

@Patrick FitzGerald: points well made ,

@Fay Moynihan: I can’t remember the date in December but on that particular date they were record number of beds available and NO patients on the trolleys. Yet the mainstream media chose to ignore it yet when hospitals are overflowing it’s all over the news etc. Bad news sells better than good news

@Patrick O Connell: Are you actually serious?

@Patrick O Connell: That’s not possible Padre.

https://www.thejournal.ie/hospital-trolleys-number-highest-pandemic-5628921-Dec2021/

Dec 2021 figures in the link above. So you are saying there was record number of beds available and no patients on trolleys someday last month?

@G Row.: We are talking about Pat here mate , the guy is living in the parallel universe.
You simply cant be that deluded if you are an average citizen unless ofc you are a PR/Damage control paid troII.

@John Johnes: You have no idea how how much these followers will jump up and down hoping for a few crumbs from their masters table.
But you are right, even for Paddy that excuse is a bit extreme.

@mcr: Propaganda piece for damage limitation with the Politburo pushing the bots out of bed early in the morning instructing them to hop on it. Nothing to see here.

@GrumpyAulFella: Did you sleep it out?

@David Corrigan: no I was working this morning, keeping the country going. You should try it :)

@GrumpyAulFella: I know all about it. It’s a 7 day week job when you work for yourself.

@mcr: I’m not a Sinn Fein supporter- but this article is common sense. It’s at the core of so many issues in our sluggish and dis-functional public services.

@David Corrigan: welcome to the party. I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase before, although probably as Gaeilge. :)

@David Corrigan: On the subject of the public service and reform, there has been an idea floated around for a good few years that we should follow Australias pension system where you, the company you work for and the govt contribute towards your pension, and you get a proper living pension when you retire capped at a reasonable amount, a proper national pension scheme as you will, if you want more then you fund it yourself. This is a great idea but it is being blocked at its infancy by high ranking civil servants as it would put an end to their tax payer funded lotto style pensions. Lads on here castigating S.F for the alleged subservience to the IRA army council or whatever forget that our main govt. parties are subservient to something far worse an hereditary civil service (high ranking part) who are in reality a self service to who reform is an anethema if it effects their remuneration in any shape or form and where most of our tax hikes in the last few years were to keep them from feeling any financial pain, the pension age extension being one of the main ones. The contributary old age pension is one of the few things in Ireland that’s completely self funded and should be completely ring fenced and never be allowed to be touched as it is a person’s own money and not state money at all as they would have you led to believe

@mcr: what do you think they should instead do – make unhelpful comments?

@Lucy Legacy: Wait until you are involved in a project or change! You need a review of every aspect of a decision before a decision is made, they will pay consultant after consultant just so they never have to be accountable for a decision. Not to mention that the rules for promotion are based on longevity over performance or ability! When I’ve been brought in to work with senior leadership in different bodies I am always blown away by how little knowledge of the area they are leading they have, they all are experts on how to progress in the Public Sector and can tell you their union agreements off by heart but they never have any knowledge in the main topic they are involved. The HSE leadership is the only exception but they are never allowed to do their job, there’s always interference

@Local Ore: I’d hate to work in such a function. I just couldn’t deal with that kind of environment.

@Local Ore: I agree with your points but would you vote against the very people who are insuring you don’t have to be accountable in your job?

@Lucy Legacy: Be careful there Lucy, some smart reactionary will be along here soon accusing some Shinner of infiltrating the public service.

@G Row.: I understand the point you are making but it is very rare (not that it doesn’t happen) that people are hired in public sector due to their allegiances. It may be shocking to know but for about 3 decades, Labour had the largest proportion of supporters employed in the public sector and today SF have a big proportion too, probably as much as FF and FG. The public sector issue isn’t any party affiliation, it’s a cultural issue in Ireland that politics has ignored because it has made it easier for politicians – neither public sector nor elected official need to be accountable and that suits them both. I’m happy that Mary Lou has started to focus on the public sector as it may start to change that culture

@Paul Keenan: that’s why this damage limitation article has been rushed out. It suddenly dawned on Mary that it hasn’t gone down well with the hundreds of thousands of PS workers/voters. So we’re told now that everyone misinterpreted her words. The spin doctors are spinning. Every time they open their mouths they put their foot in it.

@GrumpyAulFella: “Criticism as Dept of Health spends €230k sponsoring Operation Transformation series”

“Mother & Baby Homes: Just 40 survivors get health files amid row over GPs signing off on requests.”
Two headlines from today’s Journal, both Sinn Fein propaganda?
Or just the usual.

@G Row.: what’s any of that to fo with this SF TD’s propaganda article. I’m sure there have been many successes in health too like our world leading vaccination programme and Covid strategy that saved thousands of lives but it has nothing to do with this article.

@GrumpyAulFella: No point in discussing anything with you really is there?
You keep voting for the lads and make sure nothing changes, true progress.

@Paul Keenan: I don’t doubt that this is true but it’s equally concerning and points to a serious lack of professionalism in the public service. They have a job to do and personal vendettas and political allegiances have no place in that.

@G Row.: you don’t know who I vote for. I don’t vote for “the lads”.