The Fine Gael thread

[armaghniac]

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

In a society with universal services you have to have universal taxes to fund them. You can some variation in the rate of tax, but everyone has to do their bit. SF peddle the notion that only a few people should pay taxes and that this will give everything to everything.

Making multinationals paying their fair share is all very fine, provided they don't just leave. But the new OECD proposals should help ensure that some tax is paid.

[weareros]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

[armaghniac]

SF welcome business

[Owenmoresider]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

Distinct whiff of bullshit off that.

[mikehunt]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

[foxcommander]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

it keeps some of the natives in jobs. The government are seen to be creating jobs. That's about it. the rest is a tax dodge.

[StephenC]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

It's not.

[mikehunt]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

It's not.

Sure Enda!!!

[weareros]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

And what rate of tax do you think Irish corporations pay?

[mikehunt]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

And what rate of tax do you think Irish corporations pay?

Known fact that multi nationals don't pay the full 12.5. They get preferential treatment. To see how local SMEs are treated you need only look at this govt refusal to tackle upward only rents. Rates also went up during the recession.

[macdanger2]

Still think we will be facing two quick elections before a stable government emerges .

FG will do well but will find it hard to get a coalition partner.

Yeah, practically guaranteed to be a hung Dail after the next election. Whatever govt is formed will be weak and relying on independents out to line the pockets of their own constituency

[macdanger2]

My wife is a nurse in the HSE.

The major changes that she has seen in the HSE over the years is form filling and ever changing "best practice". No matter what is done now the paperwork trail takes more time than the care. Was talk of a work to rule recently and any nurse/doctor interviewed stated that it would improve the service of care as they would actually get to do the job they are there to do.

She says that half the day can be taken up responding to a stream of queries from the bank of administrators that are employed "upstairs" or trying to implement new measures of care or procedures than are been imposed from the latest review of best practice from another team of consultants who waltzed through the wards months back and identified improvements that could be made before waltzing off again to write a thousand page report with fancy graphs and pie carts and earned them a lot of money.

I think that the problem here is the lack of a change management system, one group of people are identifying improvements but there's no clear plan in place to engage with the various stakeholders to ensure smooth implementation of changes. That doesn't mean that the administrators aren't working hard or doing their best, it just means that there's no framework in place to allow their work to be effective and no communication paths for clinical staff to feedback on changes made.

For what it's worth, I think there are a couple of relatively simple changes that could be made to improve the health service:

1. IT systems
This is something that badly needs investment, paper files and folders should be a thing of the past. This should all be electronic and accessed from tablets by whatever staff needs it. It immediately cuts out the time wasted looking for files and duplicating information; time spent checking if an x-ray has been processed, etc. Consultants would be able to access the data (scans, etc.) remotely so the level of care should improve as they could be available for more cases. Granted there would need to be a reasonable level of security for data protection but nothing more than what's currently in place for Revenue.

2. Purchasing
Without any knowledge of the purchasing systems in place, I'd wager that costs could be cut by 10-20% by introducing a better purchasing system. Using an ERP system to track purchasing and usage of drugs and consumables would be a start – it would also allow for comparison of these costs between hospitals (say on a per patient-treated basis or something). Using an external vendor to manage the inventory of non-critical items. Standardising and reducing the number of different items used (e.g. multiple brands of the same gloves being purchased) and the number of approved vendors along with benchmarking prices invariably reduces purchasing costs in manufacturing environments.

3. Business Process Mapping
How things are done at a macro and micro level – identifying and reducing variations between hospitals. Having a change-management plan to prioritise improvements and communicate with staff at each stage of implementation and in particular to verify that expected savings / improvements are realised. Not an easy thing to do in such a large organisation but not impossible either – the people are probably already in place but the overall structure may be missing.

4. Clinical Process Mapping
How best to treat patients – not something I'd have a clue about but it would need to involve clinicians and business analysts.


1 & 2 above are very simple and could be done within a couple of years. 3 & 4 are longer term and more difficult but there's no reason they can't be done imo. Simply throwing more money at a system that doesn't work isn't going to solve the problems we have

[Itchy]

My god man, you are clearly working in the private sector with all these mad ideas. We won't have the like of you with your fancy ideas around the public sector.

Your last two points are called value stream mapping, a tool of lean manufacturing. It should be the first thing done in healthcare.

[armaghniac]

My god man, you are clearly working in the private sector with all these mad ideas. We won't have the like of you with your fancy ideas around the public sector.

Sadly this is too true and sadly people will continue to vote for Bollixes who keep it this way.

The pay cuts were designed to make sure any with a skill got cut more than mere clerks, which is all well and dandy except the IT guys noticed that IT pay was tending to increase if anything in the real world and they headed off there. Of course IT people are not frontline healthcare workers so if they left that was a reduction in the "admin" and some politician was probably boasting about this.

They may have done something on the purchasing end of things, but I seem to recall the very effective nurses guy, Liam Doran, saying something to the effect that if the HSE paid the same as the UK NHS for drugs that they wouldn't need to cut nurses at all .

And whatever fancy name you put on it, you have to identify the pinch points. I know little about health, but lets say diagnostic tests don't come back quickly then the treatment doesn't commence on the patient for an extra day and the patient spends 9 days in hospital instead of 8, that 10% if freed up would sort out emergency admission and a variety of other things. Because the diagnostic test facility is run "economically" the entire service might be in chaos. Does Varadkar has a list of these pinch points on his desk? Does he ask for one? What do you think? 

[weareros]

Exactly.SF go on about hthomelessness and more council houses, but vote to cut the property tax in every council. They say that people should contribute, but not their own voters, of course. Principle-free, as said above.

Not that I'd ever vote for them but Sinn Fein state quite clearly that they would fund services by way of wealth tax and making sure multi nationals pay their fair share. Current govt are siphoning money from road tax to fund Irish Water. Sinn Fein are an eady target but u still missed. Austerity over but homeless people increasing. Something not adding up.

SF giving out govt did not do enough to keep Web Summit by providing incentives; how do they think multinationals will stick around if we tax them more.

Why should multi nationals pay less than 12.5% yet indigenous companies get fleeced? Spineless govt. Of course multi nationals will flex and threaten but it's possibly a big bluff. Switching costs can be significant depending on sector.  Tesco threatened to pull out of the north when the larger companies were made to subsidise smaller local companies' rates.  They opened their biggest store a few months after.  You believe the spin but hopefully someone calls their bluff. A start would be to make them pay the actal rate..

And what rate of tax do you think Irish corporations pay?

Known fact that multi nationals don't pay the full 12.5. They get preferential treatment. To see how local SMEs are treated you need only look at this govt refusal to tackle upward only rents. Rates also went up during the recession.

Stopping upward only rents is a two edged sword as it stalls commercial real estate development, devalues commercial property,  leading to a lack of grade a commercial space for new business leading in turn to less jobs created and less outside investment. And then with less commercial real estate, rents go up anyway due to scarcity. Funny how the opposition fail to see that. Fine Gael actually learned that lesson the hard way.