Quote from: armaghniac on March 09, 2017, 02:01:02 PMQuote from: Take Your Points on March 09, 2017, 11:20:36 AM
Correct. As the public sector is the major employer the tax revenue is simply recycled. The pay bill for the public sector must be huge.
My question was, what exactly do these people do extra that other places do not have?QuoteThen there is the NHS, which could never be replicated or maintained in a UI situation given its scope and service provision and that does not begin to look at the cost of the social care provision we currently have regardless of how bad we might consider it to be.
Health is only one part of expenditure, it is the ability to afford the overall envelope that is the problem, not the details of one thing or the other.
We have 1.8 million people and we have three layers of government, local councils, local assembly, UK parliament in any other UK region this would be reduced to 2 layers, councils and parliament. Taking just two areas of health and education you can see complexities:
In health, we have 6 health trusts with an overarching board (5 regions and one for ambulance service) and then a Dept of Health in Stormont.
In education, we have had some reduction but this hasn't made a huge difference. Dept of Education oversees Education Authority which oversees all controlled schools and maintained schools but CCMS still is the employing authority for Catholic maintained schools. Dept of Education still administers voluntary grammars and integrated schools.
In GB a metropolitan council would run everything we have in N.Ireland for even more people, e.g. Manchester 2.6m people.