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Social Partnership à la française
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As we all wait out the diplay of Fine Gael self-indulgence that would shame even the most vain World Cup WAG, it’s worth recalling that there are several sleeper stories floating around that could yet shed further light on our present predicament. Take in particular the missing millions that the HSE says went to SIPTU and SIPTU says they never got.
One reaction might be — why in God’s name did anyone think that putting a union in charge of government money was a good idea in the first place? But that arrangement did ring a bell from a scandal in France. And sure enough, Google quickly delivers the name of Denis Gautier-Sauvagnac, a senior official at the employers’ federation (MEDEF) who was apparently in charge of funneling undocumented cash to unions. All in the name of “the fluidity of social relations”. It sounds better in French. But goodies are the universal language of co-option.
Of course, we still don’t know where the HSE/SIPTU investigation is going. But the Honohan and Regling reports left us with, among other uncomfortable findings, the sense that there was a strong don’t-rock-the-boat mentality to the late Celtic Tiger which would have undermined any attempts to calm the euphoria. If the social partners had found a scheme to very directly share in the tax revenue spoils, that would be one reason why.
More institutional corruption?
Even if it is not on the scale of the
1. the about €500m cost arising from the illegal “Practice of Charges for Persons in Long-Stay Care in Health Board Institutions and Related Matters” http://www.oireachtas.ie/documents/committees29thdail/committeereports2005/document3.pdf;
2. the €22bn going into Anglo-Irish Bank that we will never see again.
TWENTY TWO BILLION EURO, €22,000,000,000,000.(and counting)the entire tax take for one year. Fraud, corruption ,mismanagent, cronyism, lies and the problem being hidden behind more borrowed money . It doen’t bear thinking about and this gets passing reference in the media. It should be black framed front pages in all the papers and silences on broadcast media to lament the poor people who will die as a result of the rundown of the medical services and all the children who will die in care due to no services and the people who caused it(and Honohan told us who they are)will remain with their gauranteed pay and pensions, and no-one will be responsible for for organising the foreign travel “retraining”trips.
Betty
The good news is that it’s only 22,000,000,000 euro. You had too many zeroes. It’s all income tax + VAT for 2009.
no-one will be responsible for for organising the foreign travel “retraining”trips.
Not mention the unexplained Government jet overnighters to Las Vegas, casino capital of the world (as Cowen told the country, it wasn’t his business as to where it flew while transporting Harney).
As to the main post, I’m aware that several attempts have been made across the unions in the last year to cull the cosy little state appointments deals for the bosses. All have been ruled out of order with a variety of poor excuses about loss of influence, yaddayadda.