Madam, - The benchmarking awards were designed to bring public servants' wages up to a level approaching those in the private sector.
The economic boom of 1995-2001, it was felt, left public sector workers behind.
These awards averaged out at 8.5 per cent, to be spread out over a four-year period, the last portion of which is due to be paid out in mid-2005. This works out roughly as a meagre 2 per cent a year.
Due to an agreement tying TDs' wages to a higher level civil service grade, they too gain from these awards.
These are all easily verifiable facts. Therefore, as a lower grade public servant, it's a little galling to hear certain sections of the media disingenuously condemn these awards, without mentioning any of the above facts.
Even more galling, not to mention bizarre, is Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny's recent obsession with the cancellation of these awards. I can only assume his lack of popularity is driving him to appease a majority of private sector taxpayers/prospective voters. If so, this is cheap and easy, and not entirely surprising.
I have just one question to put to Mr Kenny: Given that he personally gains handsomely from these awards which he so consistently maligns, will he be refusing his own increase in wages? - Yours, etc.,
DAVID MARLBOROUGH, Kenilworth Park, Dublin 6W.
Madam, - My partner, and many members of my family and friends, are civil servants.
For years they have been entertaining and frustrating me with elaborate tales of public sector inefficiency. They tell me about deliberate choices to waste money so that the department budget will be fully spent and therefore not reduced the following year. They tell me about senior management tactics of obstructing each other's projects so that no manager can be seen to achieve too much or be too productive. They tell me about how most departments are overstaffed, while one sector (the Health Boards) is crippled by poor management and a real skills shortage.
They tell me the established civil service ethos is that it is important to be seen to be consulting, planning, discussing, considering and spending money. The end result is, as a rule, a third-rate interim measure.
They also assure me that it is virtually impossible to fire a civil servant, no matter how lazy and incompetent.
Unions in this country are backward. The Irish public sector proves this. They would prefer that the whole country went bankrupt with their undeserved pay deals rather than demand productivity and competition from their members.
We should reward the good public sector workers and penalise the bad ones. - Yours, etc.,
GRETA MORRISSEY, Coliemore Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin.
Madam,- Enda Kenny is to be congratulated on his timely and courageous comments on benchmarking.
We are all familiar with the old adage that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Yet this Government asked us out to one with SSIAs and benchmarking in order to get itself re-elected. Now, having finished lunch, we seem to expect the homeless person outside or the patient on a trolley to pay the bill.
It is time for honesty - not just from our politicians but from the rest of us as well. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN NELIGAN, Castlebyrne Park, Blackrock, Co Dublin.