Sir, – One of the reasons the public sector has become the whipping boy of our economic crisis is the transparency which attends to pay and conditions for all those employed by the State. Everyone knows, or can easily ascertain, what any public sector on any grade earns. It would be instructive if those members of private sector lobby groups, economists and media commentators were to make public their own salaries. This would provide a useful baseline against which many of their calls for further cuts to salaries and conditions in the public sector could be judged.
Furthermore, it bears repeating that any public sector worker on a permanent contract does not avail of the State’s dole payments; on the contrary, together with PAYE workers in the private sector, they contribute taxes through deduction at source every day, week, month, and year to the state’s coffers to finance all manner of social welfare payments. Ordinary public sector workers thus contribute substantively, both financially and in the manner of their work, to they society in which they live.
It is therefore disingenuous, ideologically abhorrent and morally vacant of this Government and its apologists to attempt to paint public servants as a singular drain on this country’s economic progress. – Yours, etc,
PATRICIA MULKEEN,
Ballinfull, Sligo.