Ireland may be in a recession (caused in large part by misguided housing subsidies), but there are two things worth admiring about the Emerald Isle’s public policy. Many wonks already know about the first policy, the 12.5 percent corporate tax rate that helped transform Ireland from the “sick man of Europe.” But it seems that Irish policymakers are reading Chris Edwards, because the second admirable policy is that lawmakers actually cut civil service compensation by 13.5 percent. And these are real cuts, not the type of phony gimmick you find in Washington, where something is called a “cut” simply because it didn’t increase as fast as previously planned.
A columnist writing in the UK‐based Times wonders why Irish bureaucrats did not go nuts with public protests and speculates that maybe they actually understand that they have a sweetheart deal compared to their brethren in the productive sector of the economy:
Because of the budget deficit, shrinking economy and untenable level of national debt, all public service salaries will be cut by an average of 13.5 per cent, with immediate effect…and will apply to frontline public workers in health, education, transport and local services and also to MPs, Ministers of State and the Attorney‐General. …Couldn’t happen, could it? Actually it has, and close to home. …public sector pay in the Republic has been cut. Not frozen, sharply cut. …although the payslips have been changed for many months now, the schools are open, the hospitals treat the sick, rubbish is collected and paper pushed around briskly enough in public organisations. Belts are tight all right and pips are squeaking; but the country whose public pay once led the EU league has not imploded into the chaos of suicidal strikes, unburied bodies, closed schools and garbage mountains, which the UK or France would expect as a matter of course if a government did any such thing. …Yet the pay cuts — I say again, 10 to 15 per cent cuts in pay, real and immediate holes in the family budget — have not caused the enraged citizenry to pull down the pillars of the temple around their own heads and everybody else’s. They just haven’t. Why? …unlike the self‐righteous whiners who speak for British public service unions, middle‐Ireland still knows that a secure and pensionable job is a privilege: that working in the public sector is not an altruistic gift to the nation, but a damn lucky break.
Since I have a multi‐part series on “Bureaucrats vs. Taxpayers” at my International Liberty blog, I especially enjoyed this part of the column, which provides a real‐world glimpse at the corrupting allure of cushy government employment:
I saw a spirited, self‐mocking sketch performed by 12‐year‐olds in a village hall entertainment the other night about “Marty Matchmaker O’Donoghue, where every ould stocking will find an ould shoe”. The girl being advertised to the men is talked up by the matchmaker as having “a Government Job! A clerk at the council office — I tell ye, she’s a laying hen!” Friends confirm that it’s an old saying: “Marry a teacher or a nurse, you’ve got a laying hen.” It does not seem that way in boom times, but even in the UK it is becoming true.