Sir, – According to the Public Service Reform initiative announced by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin, the intention is to reduce the numbers “from a peak of 320,000 in 2008” to 282,500 by 2015: a reduction of 37,500 public sector employees (Home News, November 18th).
Nowhere in the department’s 69-page document on its website does it outline how the numbers in the public sector was quantified.
Before the Government embarks on reducing numbers, shouldn’t it first ascertain and define exactly how many public sector employees there are and were? According to the latest figures (Quarter 2 , September, 2011) available from the Central Statistics Office’s “Earnings and Labour Costs”, there are 402,100 employed by the public sector, down from a peak of 427,300 in 2008 out of 1.8 million workforce.
There seems to be significant discrepancies between the CSO and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform numbers notwithstanding recent “counting” errors of €3.6 billion; shouldn’t the Government have reliable figures? – Yours, etc,