What a week it’s been.
The public sector has been shocked into silence at the news that they are to pay thousands extra into their pension schemes. We have learned that there are now more than 327,900 people unemployed in the country and everyday we hear about more and more redundancies. It’s like a big black hole right now but we will get through this. We have to. This country has been through the emergency and the famine in the past and people have come through it. It is not an easy time, and it is even harder to bear coming out of Celtic Tiger years. Our teenagers know nothing of this kind of economy. They are unable to contemplate the fact that they cannot buy a Playstation game every week like they used. The €50 pocket money that was so easily doled out has dried up and they cannot comprehend why.
As for the private sector - they have never been hit like this before and for them it is a tough deal. However, the way I see it (and I will probably be hammered for saying this ) is that everyone in the private sector has already taken this cut in paycuts in recent times. It has hit them in the form of pension payments but at the end of the day public sector pensions are guaranteed. People in the private sector who had been planning to retire around now at the age of 60 -65 are at a loss as to what to do. Their pensions are no more. Public sector pension holders have been privileged and protected and still are to a certain extent. I know it is a hard knock but it is what the rest of us have been doing for years.
We all work hard. We all deserve a good pension. None of us deserve to lose €65 a week but most of us have taken more than that in pay cuts and we will never see it again. At least the public sector is putting it into something that they will see when they retire. There is the argument that many people do not give full service in order to fully benefit from their pension scheme - particularly women - and I believe that there should be a loophole for these people who will not benefit.
It’s been a hard week as I said and nobody was unharmed. Anyone with kids has lost a percentage of the childcare supplement and people with children aged between five and five-and-a-half have lost it altogether. Overseas aid has been slashed but how can we pay it if we are borrowing to donate it? It doesn’t make sense.
And the worst part is that things are not getting better and they will get a lot worse before they get better by all accounts. We will be hit again and again until our economy improves and all we can hope for are low interest rates and price cuts on our everyday purchases. This is beginning to happen thankfully and for those who have lost jobs and are trying to survive on benefits, this should be a small help.
So we strive on and hope for the best - bearing in mind that at this stage a large percentage of the population is in the same boat.
