W2E-009 Regional editorials-1.txt
VOICE OF THE PEOPLE

Public pay is the key to growth

THE PROSPECTIVE political partners are just now finalising their programme for what they describe as a Government for Renewal. If they can indeed provide a sense of renewal after the appalling conflicts of the last few weeks, then their new administration will be widely welcomed.

But they do have a major task ahead. The current negotiations are private, but we must assume that public sector pay is one of the key problems to be sorted out. If this issue is not tackled head on, then this incoming Government will fail to deliver the economic and social benefits which are the essential dynamo for growth.

The entire thrust of recent government policy has been to tax wage earners highly, to penalise industry and to extract the very maximum taxation on all economic activity. This extra money has been expropriated from the public by the Revenue Commissioners with ruthless efficiency. That has been the real policy of the outgoing government and the Revenue Commissioners have carried out that policy dutifully. That is their job.

The money collected has been transferred from individual wage earners in the private sector directly into the pockets of those working in the public sector. Thus, since 1987 wages in the public sector have risen by 70%, compared with a 44% increase for everyone else.

Not only has that policy been unfair, it has had the effect of seriously slowing down, if not strangling, firms which otherwise would have been able to offer more employment. That policy has to stop, it has to be reversed.

The outgoing Government constantly told us how good they were, but there was a large element of bluff in all their insistent assurances. In fact, the last Government was held to ransom by the public sector. The price was paid dearly by the unemployed and by those tens of thousands of bright young people who had to emigrate. The funds which should have generated jobs were swept away into the public purse. That was the true record of the last Government.

It was a policy which denied hundreds of thousands of our young people a right to live their lives, and to develop their careers here. Those educated young people who are working in London, Birmingham, Paris and Berlin and as illegals in the United States have been cheated also of their Irish inheritance. That policy can be changed, it must be changed.

The incoming Government must reduce taxes for lower paid workers. That is the only way in which their standard of living can increase. The new administration must insist on striking a more equitable balance between the public and the private sectors.

We believe that the Democratic Left, Fine Gael and the Labour Party will receive a strong, positive response if, together as a united front, they adopt a policy of social reform, based on equality and justice.

The Democratic Left is a Party with concise and practical ideas on the creation and the distribution of wealth and we do not believe that they are in any way the Party of extremists, as they are sometimes portrayed.

Similarly, once the Labour Party abandon their excessive use of shallow, public relations hyperbole and empty moral platitudes, they will gain greatly in public respect and will be in a better position to implement policies of genuine reform. Fine Gael should also be able to work well with these partners because, despite its traditional middle class support, it has always been inspired by popular radicalism which was epitomised over a generation ago by Declan Costello's Just Society document. For all these reasons we believe that the partners share a common idealism and zeal for reform.

The new partners certainly have the potential and they have the will. All they require is a genuine unity of purpose, a spirit of tolerance and a determination to be truly loyal to each other, at least for their term in office. It can be done. In the interests of the country it must be done.
