ANALYSIS:The political difficulties for the Government are immense and close at hand, writes MARK HENNESSY
HAVING UPSET the elderly over medical cards, the Government's plans to reform the public service now potentially create grounds for annoying 350,000 public servants.
If implemented - and it is a big "if" - the changes would fundamentally affect the daily lives of each and every one of them over time.
So far, Taoiseach Brian Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan insist that there is a well of support within the system just waiting to be unleashed.
But this is also the same system which requires negotiations to be held with unions before porters can be diverted in some hospitals from one hospital corridor to another.
Ministers' officials were afraid, up to not too long ago, to change the time on their office clocks with the onset of winter or summer time, lest they cause an industrial dispute.
Undoubtedly, there is a hunger among the thousands of driven State employees who toil daily to deliver the best possible service to the public.
So far, however, many of that same number have remained silent for too long when faced with the laziness, ineptitude and worse of other colleagues, who exploit a system that makes it next to impossible to fire them, while senior managers have shied away from using the powers that they have had to impose discipline.
The political difficulties for Cowen and Lenihan, who have the temptation not to annoy public service workers while Fine Gael seems intent on doing everything possible to do exactly that, are immense and close at hand and many of the potential gains will not be visible for much longer.
However, there are some measures, such as letting the public use the internet more frequently in its dealings with the State, that could be immensely popular and delivered relatively quickly, as has been seen by the popularity enjoyed already of the online motor tax system.
Launching the plan, Lenihan went out of his way to declare his support for the public service, and to decry much of the recent onslaughts upon it.
It was not, he said, "some huge bureaucratic machine", but one composed of doctors, nurses, teachers and gardaí, dedicated to the public weal.
"I deplore the kind of demonisation of the public service that has featured in public debate over recent months.
"It is part of a wider tendency in some quarters, including, unfortunately, political parties, to traduce whole quarters of our society, which have been the cornerstones of the growth and prosperity that we have enjoyed - whether it be the construction sector, the banks, or the public service as a whole," he said.
However, there needs to be fewer of them if the public pay bill - which has jumped in size by 40 per cent since 2004 - is to be restrained, judging by Cowen's decision to describe the removal of 10,000 posts in an already ordered efficiency drive as "a good start".
The Government's plans have so far been greeted with a quiet welcome by the trade unions, though they would be unlikely to show their true hand so early in the game.
A redundancy package, if sufficiently well funded, would undoubtedly be oversubscribed many times over, but this is to be the third part of the jigsaw, and appearing only after long-held demarcations are abolished and redeployments become the norm for State employees.
Neither is likely to be popular.
The hard issues in yesterday's publications will not come up for decision until next summer, when the country's economic fortunes could be much worse.
In the past, public sector workers have generally - but, not always - conceded work practice changes in return for extra pay, either immediately, or later.
Already, the public service has agreed to an 11-month pay pause before it qualifies for a 3.5 per cent pay rise - one that will be shared by very few people in the private sector, regardless of the predictions made by Siptu president Jack O'Connor on TV3's Tonight With Vincent Browneon Tuesday night.
Given the likely state of the Government's finances, it is probable - not guaranteed, but probable - that Lenihan will be pleading inability to pay by next summer.
If that happens, what chance then for public sector reform?
In such a climate, the Government may be worrying more about keeping services open, rather than reforming them.