Union leader criticises spending review body

THE DEPUTY general secretary of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) has strongly criticised the Government’s public expenditure review committee – known as An Bord Snip Nua – and forecast that its report would contain “more repugnant and offensive attacks” on his members.

Eoin Ronayne said following a whistlestop tour of Government departments, the chairman of the group, economist Colm McCarthy, would produce a report that would seek to justify cuts in numbers, changes in work practices and the transfer of staff between departments and even geographic locations.

“Not content with screwing up the economy, the neo-liberal economists – endeavouring to justify their excessive salaries – will now seek to screw up our public services. Just watch them make a mess of the public services on which so many of the most vulnerable citizens depend. Here we go again, egotistical economists playing Russian roulette with the lives of ordinary people. Shame on them,” he said.

Addressing the CPSU’s annual conference in Galway, Mr Ronayne also said that there could be no room for top bankers and builders who for their own personal gain shepherded the State into a cul de sac of pain and poverty.

He said the State was at a crossroads and that it could either allow those who presided over “the most outrageous rip-off of all time morph into new entities advising the Government from the economic collapse they engineered or the campaign could be pressed home to drive them from respectable society”.

Mr Ronayne said that he was aware of some questionable detentions of citizens under the Offences Against the State Act over the years on the belief that they were a threat to the security and stability of the State.

He said that there were quite a few top bankers, developers and builders whose business transactions have put the economic and financial security of the State in grave danger and had yet to see the inside of a Garda station.

“I am not calling for the internment of top bankers, developers and builders, but isn’t it high time that white collar treason is pursued and punished,” he said.