The Fine Gael thread

[AZOffaly]

Mike, Fox, I don't know about yerselves, but I work in the private sector. Do ye really think that if it was privatised, Irish Water wouldn't become completely focussed on profit, as opposed to service? I'm sure it's not cost effective to provide water to some parts of the country. If this was privatised, you can be sure they'd be looking to cut costs in those areas.

[mikehunt]

Mike, Fox, I don't know about yerselves, but I work in the private sector. Do ye really think that if it was privatised, Irish Water wouldn't become completely focussed on profit, as opposed to service? I'm sure it's not cost effective to provide water to some parts of the country. If this was privatised, you can be sure they'd be looking to cut costs in those areas.

Irish Water had no business plan until yesterday, no revenue forecasts, infrastructure timing, costs, funding. Yet they had announced how much bonuses were to be paid, staff tied in to contracts, fortunes spent on consultants, marketing and advertising expenses (in a monopoly situation). Meters installed yet are absolutely useless for a couple of years. Why press ahead with installation when investment is needed in other areas like where the boil notices are in place? It is an absolute shambles. Wait and see how much we will pay for water in a few years time. Think they plan to spend 900m a year but current revenue is 300m, could be wrong on that but there is a shortfall and once the fixed charge time lapses we're going to pay for this shambles. Where is the incentive to be efficient? They have too many staff.

The privatisation route has it's problems, ones being mentioned include them not providing a service in low profit areas. Others include hiking prices, turning water off for people who can't afford to pay their bill, focusing on profit rather than providing clean water. Private companies exist to make money, nature of the beast. That's why there's a need to keep control of the beast. I have never been involved in state contract negotiations but there are such things as service level agreements. Tie the provider into certain responsibilities. Penalties for unsafe water, open it up to competition to keep prices down, regulator to be able to intervene if prices get too high. Finally, it is possible for the state to gain by way of getting a share of the profits. Imagine if the govt of the time had included a term in the NTR contracts that they take a % of any future profits. Clowns sold it for a pittance and had to buy it back because it was making so much money.

I'm no fan of privatisation but think it's the lesser of two evils. What's happening at the minute is a farce. The head of Irish Water has been told by the govt not to do interviews. This is the man who oversaw the spending of 96m on the Poolbeg incinerator (third of it being on consultants) and not one bit of work has been done. Yet there is uproar on this topic about a few protestors.

[AZOffaly]

I agree it has been handled badly, very badly. I also agree, and have been banging this drum for a while, that it's a disgrace that we do not have visibility of how our money is spent across all departments, not just Irish Water.  At least then we could make an educated judgement about whether it's fair or not to need more money for any individual service, such as Irish Water.

However, where I disagree with the protesters is the notion that Water should be free. Water is free, it falls from the sky, but treating it, piping it, maintaining it and making it fit for consumption are not free. I also disagree with people intimidating politicians, presidents or people trying to just do their job, and I am deeply suspicious of the populist motives of the likes of Paul Murphy.

And as regards privatisation, I don't think that's what we need. Private companies, regardless of SLAs (I know about SLAs) will do everything to turn a profit, and maximise the profit. They will not enter an agreement unless they feel they can make a profit out of it, and they will do everything they can within contract to maximise their profit. That's the name of the game, as you said.

So as Water is a public service, I feel it should be provided by a public body. And I feel the public body, ALL public bodies, should be completely transparent in the case of income and expenditure, and some sort of government ombudsman should be allowed raise issues from the likes of Paul Murphy regarding the expenditure if he wants to query a line item etc.

[mikehunt]

I wouldn't be a fan of Murphy and would never vote for him however he was elected on the back of the Water Charges. He is doing what the people asked him to do unlike the majority of politicians. Their ideas for the economy are a bit far fetched but Joe Higgins does make some fair points on how the money could be raised. Just because they can talk nonsense some of the time doesn't mean they don't have good ideas. The outrage of the treatment of Burton and Higgins is ott. You had 2 prison officers getting stabbed the other day because there was no armed security for a known dangerous criminal yet you have armed guards at water protests? You had 3 cars and 8 guards arresting Murphy yet real crimes are ignored. If the protestors got jail time for contempt then fair enough, but why are people that have committed real crimes walking the street unhindered. No consistency.

There's a Fine Gael gathering in Castlebar at the weekend. A local toddler who has Downs and is in poor health has been refused a medical card multiple times. All of a sudden on the Thursday before the gathering the parents get a call to say they're getting a medical card even though their latest application was refused last week so no existing application was in place. Yet all we hear about is these "thugs" who are protesting about water charges whose greatest crime is to shout obscenities and cause a bit of civil unrest. What about the thugs who are refusing to help the sick, the poor and the homeless, causing the unnecessary deaths of people due to underfunding? The real thugs are those who are putting the interests of the wealthy ahead of the people that put them in their job and pay their wages.

[Rossfan]

You must be a public service union rep. Makes sense now. Fund the gravy train no matter what.

aye - tell the ambulance crew, the fireen, Gardai e.g. who've just cleaned up the pieces after a road crash that they're on a " gravy train".
Try and think for yourself and stop reading the Irish "Independent" and the "Irish" Daily Mail.
I see you're complaining about underfunding in Health - where do you think the funds will come from? The Northern Bank robbery?
Then you want a Private Company to look after water - look what happened when the public utility Eircom was privatised by HarneyMcCreevy - no proper broadband across most of the Country as there would be no profit in providing it to small towns and scattered rural communities.
Impossible to get Employers to set up anything in the Elphins, Frenchparks, Boyles and  Strokestowns as a result. There was a disused factory in Boyle recently which a foreign food preparation crowd were going to buy/lease to set up a 40 job operation.
Pulled out because it took half the day to do a bit of online business.

[armaghniac]

So as Water is a public service, I feel it should be provided by a public body. And I feel the public body, ALL public bodies, should be completely transparent in the case of income and expenditure, and some sort of government ombudsman should be allowed raise issues from the likes of Paul Murphy regarding the expenditure if he wants to query a line item etc.

Irish Water is a disgrace in the sense that even after the crisis, there was no progress in terms of transparency, accountability etc. But the response is equally idiotic, there has been no call for mechanisms to be set in place to ensure transparency and accountability, instead all we get are risible statements about already having paid for water and thugs intimidating people on the streets. A transparency commission of some sort which enforced principles a bit like data protection is needed, but politicians are as likely to propose this as a turkey vote for Christmas. Unfortunately, the  public don't seem to have the gumption to ensure that they do so.

I wouldn't be a fan of Murphy and would never vote for him however he was elected on the back of the Water Charges. He is doing what the people asked him to do unlike the majority of politicians

Fine Gael were elected to restore sanity to the public finances, part of which is not giving things away for nothing.

[johnneycool]

Fine Gael were elected to restore sanity to the public finances, part of which is not giving things away for nothing.

Fine Gael were elected because they weren't Fianna Fail. I'd doubt it had anything to do with an policies they had.

[Rossfan]

Fine Gael were elected to restore sanity to the public finances, part of which is not giving things away for nothing.

Fine Gael were elected because they weren't Fianna Fail. I'd doubt it had anything to do with an policies they had.

That had a lot to do withit alright.
They are now looking after their own with cuts to top rate of income tax
and including people up to €79,999 as middle income.
They know the pay nothing brigade and the thugs were never going to vote for them anyway.

[mikehunt]

You must be a public service union rep. Makes sense now. Fund the gravy train no matter what.

aye - tell the ambulance crew, the fireen, Gardai e.g. who've just cleaned up the pieces after a road crash that they're on a " gravy train".
Try and think for yourself and stop reading the Irish "Independent" and the "Irish" Daily Mail.
I see you're complaining about underfunding in Health - where do you think the funds will come from? The Northern Bank robbery?
Then you want a Private Company to look after water - look what happened when the public utility Eircom was privatised by HarneyMcCreevy - no proper broadband across most of the Country as there would be no profit in providing it to small towns and scattered rural communities.
Impossible to get Employers to set up anything in the Elphins, Frenchparks, Boyles and  Strokestowns as a result. There was a disused factory in Boyle recently which a foreign food preparation crowd were going to buy/lease to set up a 40 job operation.
Pulled out because it took half the day to do a bit of online business.

Are you employed in the public or private sector?

[mikehunt]

Fine Gael were elected to restore sanity to the public finances, part of which is not giving things away for nothing.

"..............part of which is not giving things away for nothing".

Would giving guaranteed bonuses in a monopoly situation where no targets need to be met fall in to this category?

[muppet]

I wouldn't be a fan of Murphy and would never vote for him however he was elected on the back of the Water Charges. He is doing what the people asked him to do unlike the majority of politicians. Their ideas for the economy are a bit far fetched but Joe Higgins does make some fair points on how the money could be raised. Just because they can talk nonsense some of the time doesn't mean they don't have good ideas. The outrage of the treatment of Burton and Higgins is ott. You had 2 prison officers getting stabbed the other day because there was no armed security for a known dangerous criminal yet you have armed guards at water protests? You had 3 cars and 8 guards arresting Murphy yet real crimes are ignored. If the protestors got jail time for contempt then fair enough, but why are people that have committed real crimes walking the street unhindered. No consistency.

There's a Fine Gael gathering in Castlebar at the weekend. A local toddler who has Downs and is in poor health has been refused a medical card multiple times. All of a sudden on the Thursday before the gathering the parents get a call to say they're getting a medical card even though their latest application was refused last week so no existing application was in place. Yet all we hear about is these "thugs" who are protesting about water charges whose greatest crime is to shout obscenities and cause a bit of civil unrest. What about the thugs who are refusing to help the sick, the poor and the homeless, causing the unnecessary deaths of people due to underfunding? The real thugs are those who are putting the interests of the wealthy ahead of the people that put them in their job and pay their wages.

The Troika insisted on water charges.

The Troika was pissed of when we abandoned (for the time being) metering water usage.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/troika-rebuked-by-government-over-water-charges-1.2029255

"The European Commission wants higher water charges to reduce consumption. But the Government recognises the need to give people a a period of certainty that the maximum charge they face will be affordable, while also giving households with meters the possibility of lower bills if they use less water," the source said.

The Government are caught between populist bullshitters and a no nonsense paymaster. And they are in turn screwing it up even further by trying to serve both, while giving the illusion of being in control.

We are a long way from being out of the mess. But because there is a GE coming the useless Government has to pretend everything is good and it is all under control, while the reckless opposition pretend it is all unnecessary and they can make the problems all go away, magically.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/david-mcwilliams/david-mcwilliams-dont-celebrate-yet-the-bailout-exit-is-far-from-mission-accomplished-29827544.html

So concerned was the IMF about the unexploded landmine deep inside the banks that in its latest Fiscal Outlook, buried deep in the report, is a suggestion that a "capital levy" might be levied on wealth in the event that debt levels are not being brought down quick enough.

This is what happened in Cyprus where deposits over €100,000 were impounded to "bail in" the banks.

On page 49 of the report, the IMF makes this suggestion explicitly. These reports are never published without the people at the top agreeing to everything.

What this means is that Williams believes the IMF can take any money on deposit in banks in Ireland, if it feels the need. Remember the man in Cyprus that borrowed money for his child college fees? The money went into his account one day, and was seized the next. He still owes the money that he never got to use and his child's college fees went unpaid. That is what a 'wealth levy' does. It takes redundancy money, pension payouts, inheritances and savings to pay off mortgages/college fees etc and doesn't discriminate.

Politics in this country is truly sickening. Every last one of them are greedy self-serving spoofers.

MikeHunt is right that the people elected Paul Murphy to stop water charges. But he never gave them the full story. He led them to believe water charges are optional. He is a perfect example of what our politics is like nowadays.

MikeHunt adds to the cynicism by exploiting the story of a Down's Syndrome child, for political reasons. Like I said, politics here is about as low and as sickening as it can get.

[mikehunt]

Exatcly how am I exploiting the story of a downs child?

[muppet]

Exatcly how am I exploiting the story of a downs child?

In one paragraph you juxtapose a FG gathering, a Down's Syndrome child who didn't, then did get a medical card and finally, the water charges protestors on the streets. You link the former two to excuse the latter. You didn't even pretend to show any concern, which you might had done by leaving the story at FG and the child, who is obviously an innocent in all of this.

Instead you immediately hold up the water charges thugs as the victims. Here is one such victim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxQCi3-wsk&spfreload=10

[lynchbhoy]

I wouldn't be a fan of Murphy and would never vote for him however he was elected on the back of the Water Charges. He is doing what the people asked him to do unlike the majority of politicians. Their ideas for the economy are a bit far fetched but Joe Higgins does make some fair points on how the money could be raised. Just because they can talk nonsense some of the time doesn't mean they don't have good ideas. The outrage of the treatment of Burton and Higgins is ott. You had 2 prison officers getting stabbed the other day because there was no armed security for a known dangerous criminal yet you have armed guards at water protests? You had 3 cars and 8 guards arresting Murphy yet real crimes are ignored. If the protestors got jail time for contempt then fair enough, but why are people that have committed real crimes walking the street unhindered. No consistency.

There's a Fine Gael gathering in Castlebar at the weekend. A local toddler who has Downs and is in poor health has been refused a medical card multiple times. All of a sudden on the Thursday before the gathering the parents get a call to say they're getting a medical card even though their latest application was refused last week so no existing application was in place. Yet all we hear about is these "thugs" who are protesting about water charges whose greatest crime is to shout obscenities and cause a bit of civil unrest. What about the thugs who are refusing to help the sick, the poor and the homeless, causing the unnecessary deaths of people due to underfunding? The real thugs are those who are putting the interests of the wealthy ahead of the people that put them in their job and pay their wages.

The Troika insisted on water charges.

The Troika was pissed of when we abandoned (for the time being) metering water usage.

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/troika-rebuked-by-government-over-water-charges-1.2029255

"The European Commission wants higher water charges to reduce consumption. But the Government recognises the need to give people a a period of certainty that the maximum charge they face will be affordable, while also giving households with meters the possibility of lower bills if they use less water," the source said.

The Government are caught between populist bullshitters and a no nonsense paymaster. And they are in turn screwing it up even further by trying to serve both, while giving the illusion of being in control.

We are a long way from being out of the mess. But because there is a GE coming the useless Government has to pretend everything is good and it is all under control, while the reckless opposition pretend it is all unnecessary and they can make the problems all go away, magically.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/david-mcwilliams/david-mcwilliams-dont-celebrate-yet-the-bailout-exit-is-far-from-mission-accomplished-29827544.html

So concerned was the IMF about the unexploded landmine deep inside the banks that in its latest Fiscal Outlook, buried deep in the report, is a suggestion that a "capital levy" might be levied on wealth in the event that debt levels are not being brought down quick enough.

This is what happened in Cyprus where deposits over €100,000 were impounded to "bail in" the banks.

On page 49 of the report, the IMF makes this suggestion explicitly. These reports are never published without the people at the top agreeing to everything.

What this means is that Williams believes the IMF can take any money on deposit in banks in Ireland, if it feels the need. Remember the man in Cyprus that borrowed money for his child college fees? The money went into his account one day, and was seized the next. He still owes the money that he never got to use and his child's college fees went unpaid. That is what a 'wealth levy' does. It takes redundancy money, pension payouts, inheritances and savings to pay off mortgages/college fees etc and doesn't discriminate.

Politics in this country is truly sickening. Every last one of them are greedy self-serving spoofers.

MikeHunt is right that the people elected Paul Murphy to stop water charges. But he never gave them the full story. He led them to believe water charges are optional. He is a perfect example of what our politics is like nowadays.

MikeHunt adds to the cynicism by exploiting the story of a Down's Syndrome child, for political reasons. Like I said, politics here is about as low and as sickening as it can get.

Muppet
the troika were also supposed to have insisted on the legal services bill and reform, but since have back tracked with department officials saying that there was no such imposition, but merely a recommendation to look at many things such as legal health etc etc

I think water charges are possibly in the same boat - though am not 100% sure.

[mikehunt]

Exatcly how am I exploiting the story of a downs child?

In one paragraph you juxtapose a FG gathering, a Down's Syndrome child who didn't, then did get a medical card and finally, the water charges protestors on the streets. You link the former two to excuse the latter. You didn't even pretend to show any concern, which you might had done by leaving the story at FG and the child, who is obviously an innocent in all of this.

Instead you immediately hold up the water charges thugs as the victims. Here is one such victim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxQCi3-wsk&spfreload=10

Only reason the child got the card was because fg were in town. That was my point. You want to get all holier than though then go ahead.