One Mayo man who can’t be accused of being afraid of hard work is Dara Calleary. He is certainly going to be put to the test now.
There was great jubilation in the Ballina man’s camp when he was promoted to the rank of Junior Minister nearly a year ago, but his latest role, Junior Minister with responsibility for public sector reform, attracts less celebration. Not because he doesn’t deserve to be recognised for his abilities, but because it is an unenviable post during a very tumultuous period in the public sector.
Add this to his current portfolio of Junior Minister with responsibility for labour affairs and one wonders how the 37-year-old will have time to tie his shoe laces.
I don’t think any Mayo person is ungrateful that our county has a Dáil deputy who is held in such high esteem by his party leader, but can there be any winners in the public sector reform department?
The public sector is a shambles, over staffed, over funded, loaded with inefficiencies, and on the brink of holding the country to ransom over pay cuts. Look at the carry on in the passport office alone. Forty thousand passports waiting to be issued. Family holidays ruined. Business opportunities lost. Sports people losing out on life-changing opportunities. The current industrial action being taken by the passport office workers is only hurting the ordinary citizen and not the political top dogs who decided to cut the low paid workers’ wages while reinstating the proposed cuts to their managers. No one can argue that it was not a ridiculous decision to let the high paid managers continue to take home big bucks while the low paid, hard working front line staff suffer. But holding the country to ransom and costing thousands of other low paid workers to lose out on their annual family holidays is deplorable and not earning them any favours among the public.
How anyone can draft and implement reform to a sector where unions rule with an iron fist and offer little scope for manoeuvre without the threat of work to rules and strikes, is beyond comprehension. Then there is the Government on the other side spinning and spoofing and creating an ‘us and them’ scenario.
Knowing Dara he will embrace the challenge. He will need to look at this burden as a chance to cement his reputation as a hardworking and shrewd policy maker. Not all of his decisions will be popular. Most will probably be met with objection and obstruction but he must persevere. The private sector are struggling too and have taken pay cuts and redundancies without the same platform to cry, and at the end of the day people need to get back to work for a fair and reasonable wage. Efficiencies need to be found. The health service needs a complete overhaul. Cuts to education have been ill-informed. A clear strategy is what is required and that will involve some hard decisions. Jobs will have to be lost.
There is no doubt that the public sector needs serious reform and given Dara’s business background he is sure to have ideas. Where he will start while juggling the labour affairs portfolio, one would ask? Are there enough days in the week to get through such a heavy workload?
Hopefully he will not be made a scapegoat. It’s a post that similarly could ruin his promising political career as it starts to take flight. A poison chalice you might call it. But certainly a character building challenge.
Toni Bourke Editor [email protected]
