Goodbye Eircom.
In the current economic climate it is not unreasonable for people to expect to be treated with a little more decency / common sense / reverence by companies providing goods and services. In particular big companies that had previously operated as monopoly providers that are now faced with the most aggressive competition they ever will face at a time when this company is clearly struggling to emerge from its monopolistic working attitudes towards its customers. eircom previously enjoyed civil service status for all its staff and management, and now with the telecoms market deregulated the new service providers are providing better value for money, better services, and certainly a better attitude towards their customers.
Despite being aggressively pursued by these companies I resisted all offers from these companies and stuck with eircom as my telecoms service provider. For twenty five years eircom was my telephone provider and when they ventured into the mobile phone market I got my first mobile phone from them and when the service providers arrived I stuck with them on the basis that they were the wholly Irish owned company providing good working conditions and salaries for their staff.
Basically I stuck with the company through thick and thin, good and bad, whatever the guff I got from them, when I was paying through the nose for their services. In the recent past I have not had much contact with them other than the lack of speed on my broadband service. I have never received the right speeds and even when I complained I never got what I was paying for, however I still resisted changing through some twisted logic that I used to stay with this company on the basis that it was still providing Irish employment. Even when they moved their call centre out of Ireland I was a bit peeved but I still stayed with them on the basis that they were still the dominant played in the country and I think I still believed that they would come into the real world of consumer service providers, the world where the customer is king. I subscribed to that theory a long time ago although I refined it slightly to mean that the customer is not always right, but that they are always the customer, and somehow as a service provider I need to get them to buy my goods and services, and thus I would get their money from them in the most efficient most profitable way.
Anyway I have been treated in my opinion very badly by Eircom and this is the straw that has broken the camels back. Last week my service was cut off by Eircom for non payment of a one hundred and fifty six euro bill. This was just one bill for a two monthly period and I have regularly gone over into a second and I,m sure even into a third billing period. Anyway when my wife called them to query why we had no service she came up against a very rude person, and got no sympathy what so ever. This lady insisted the bill must be paid and if we wanted the service turned back on then we would also have to pay a twenty five euro reconnection fee. What annoyed me about this bill is that we have a standing monthly charge of sixty five euro per month, and therefore the calls value on this bill is twenty six euro for a two month period, which indicates that we do not use the landline very much, and the biggest portion of the bill is for broadband which as I said before we have never got a satisfactory level of speed that we have paid for.
The upshot of the issue is we are moving to a different service provider. My wife decided to move her company (which uses a substantial amount of phone calls each month) to a different service provider.
Eircom is now losing at least two customers, my home and my wife's business land lines business. They are also most likely going to lose family and friends accounts as we now no longer have any reason to be part of phone deals that allow each other to call Eircom lines. They are also going to lose our mobile business which involves at least twenty mobile phones that are tied up in various deals usually allowing each other to call as part of a package deal.
Apart from choosing to give our business to a rival company it makes good financial sense to change to UPC because we are going to save twenty five euro per month while getting a speed of 30mbs on our broadband service.
I estimate that Eircoms action last week are going to cost the company about fifty thusand euro per year. We will get some personal pleasure in exercising our prerogative in moving our business to a company that treat us with respect and dignity, (and anyway) if they do not treat us right, then we will just move again.
The age of consumer awareness is upon us all and companies better get to grips with the fact that consumers are choosing to exercise the right to decide who their money goes to, and I believe that those companies that put the customer as king will be the winners in the end.
From the reports today about the ESB and Gas companies cutting off supply to customers and then charging a reconnection fee of two hundred euro, the cynic in me now thinks that these large companies have turned to disconnections as a source of revenue.
So goodbye Eircom it has not been nice knowing you, now if only I could do the same with the electricity and gas suppliers.
Since the formation of the Irish Republic, my family comes from 5 generations of north and south inner city Dublin, over 1000 true blue dubs came from these unions. I lived in the wonderful suburb of Ballymun were my children were raised. My second son was the first person in these 5 generations to get a degree. We proudly attended his conferral of a degree in structural engineering in St Patricks Cathedral, and to be honest we all believed his future was extremely rosy. Little did we know what was coming?
He can not find work in this country and is now emigrating FOR WORK, nothing else. He did the travelling bit after university and tried to establish a career in Ireland, but he can not do it, it’s proving impossible.
He has been used as an example of how young people can achieve a successful education to his younger cousins.
Now it is not such a good example to give these younger children this example as it now appears that if you get an education, then you have to emigrate to get work.
As a father I feel extremely annoyed over this. My whole family are broken hearted and worried that he will never come back. His mother and aunties and uncles are worried sick about him emigrating and all I can do is sit back, watch and let it happen.
What is particularly annoying is the government is making no effort what so ever to help graduates just like him in all spheres of subjects. Architects, Engineers, Solicitors, the list is endless are all looking to emigrate for work, and the government sits idly by and watches like I do. However I am not a player in the whole game and as an experienced voluntary community development worker, I can clearly see that a significant player i.e. the government is not even in the game.
There is no logic in Ireland Inc (bankrupt as we are) in continuing to educate young people so that they can be employed in other countries. We should be creating employment opportunities here for these people, and at this point in time the main source of investment in employment has to be the government. Never mind investing in banks, they are not going to create any more jobs other than their own. The government should invest in Ireland Inc to provide the infrastructure that every modern business needs, fast broadband easily accessed and reasonable priced, cheaper electricity / gas and fuel. Better roads, better sewage, etc etc etc, to allow business people to invest their money in their business, and thus create employment, and ultimately increased taxes for the exchequer.
It is a simple concept really.
When I consider the amount of corruption that has emanated from the higher echelons of Irish society over the past 3 decades, I can not help thinking that maybe I should not have encouraged him to get an education, maybe then he could stay here, join a political party that wields a lot of power, and hey presto he would have all his needs looked after by his political friends. I could have taught him to be a gangster, then not only would he stay in Ireland, but if he got caught all he needs to do is give the government half his money and voila the other half is legitimate. The level of hypocrisy that goes on in Ireland never ceases to amaze me. The scenario above is presented as a pragmatic way to deal with gangsters. The government has created more ways to launder illegal money, than anybody can keep up with, its a joke really for any government to be condoning this type of activity, even if it is for pragmatic reasons. The financial scandals are showing that the more money you have (no matter how you got it) the less likely you are to be prosecuted or most importantly, you are highly unlikely to give up your money, no matter what happens.
Today the government announced that old age pensioners are to be targeted in an effort to cut back the cost of providing them with a meagre amount of money to live on. All public service are being curtailed. Frontline public servants are losing their jobs. A huge number of senior people are being allowed to retire early with fancy lump sums and pension arrangements, while they know full well they will be rehired as consultants. The little people on the bottom do not get any such luxury. Contracts are not renewed, staff out sick find there is no position to return to work etc, and the public finds access to services more difficult, education cutbacks all over the country, teachers on the dole, employed teachers expected to better with less, etc etc. I do not need to go on anymore about this, we all know the issues.
And what does the government do. It’s busy saving the Euro. The deputy prime minister says it’s good for graduates to emigrate. For the last 30 years her party said it was immoral for Britain to be offering our graduates jobs and thus creating a brain drain on Ireland, NOW EMIGRATION IS A GOOD THING, what planet are these people on?
Either way the helplessness that I feel at the moment is reflective of the people as a whole, and it appears by the time we get to an election, it will be far too late to salvage anything. The government may think they can go back to Europe with the begging bowl out, but that will not yield any worthwhile results. The Euro is in freefall and I doubt if the German people still feel obligated to prop up the currency anymore. The political attempt to unite Europe has fallen flatly on its face and its political handlers will be written in history as failures.
What is absolutely amazing about this is the people of all European nations were quite willing to co-operate and make the unification a success, but the actions of a very small minority of very powerful people has brought down the whole house of cards. History will not be kind to those people and they will be vilified in movies, and song, and art and literature.
I hope they can look in the mirror and like what is looking back, because they are not fooling anybody but themselves.
I can not help wondering about the provision of public services, by public and civil servants. As I understand it, public services are supplied by state employees to members of the public. They also provide various services to the tax payers in a community perspective which as individuals we could never afford to purchase, and therefore as a community we pay taxes that are used to provide these public services, like a big worker co-operative. We co-operate and pay taxes, and then public servants work to provide us with services, and then they get paid money, from our taxes. It’s a simple system really, and what is really good about this system, is, it works. At least it works in principle.
In Ireland at this point in time May 2010, the senior managers in local authorities (well over paid public servants in my humble opinion) are constantly making an argument for contracting out public services. Their main argument is they can not make a profit for providing these services. They are prepared to sacrifice their colleague’s jobs at the coal face of these services, because they can not manage the provision of the services efficiently.
Below is the text from a report in today’s RTE news section here is the link:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/1003/waste.html
Council to pull out of bin collections
One of Dublin's four local authorities has announced plans to discontinue its waste collection service.
Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown County Council is to appoint a contractor for its black and brown bins.
County Manager Owen Keegan is also to decide whether the council should continue to participate in the regional waste management strategy.
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Waste company Panda began operating in Dún Laoghaire in 2007 and householders have since abandoned the council in droves.
With subsequent union-council rationalising talks failing, officials now project their waste service will lose €10m this year.
Mr Keegan wants a procurement process to appoint a contractor for the council's black bins and pending brown bins for organic waste.
He is also engaging a consultant to assess if the council should participate any longer in the regional waste management strategy.
He has declined to comment, but a withdrawal could mean any new council waste contractor not being obliged to bring rubbish to the planned Ringsend incinerator.
This raises another cloud over the controversial plant, but Dublin City Council said last night there were no implications for infrastructure that would cause it problems.
Reacting to the news, Panda Director John Dunne said the company was not surprised by the council's decision to withdraw from the market.
'With every second home already served by Panda, and with prices 20% lower than the Council frozen until at least 2010, we look forward to welcoming even more new customers in the coming week,' Mr Dunne said.
Michael Sanfey, Head of Sales & Marketing with Greenstar said: 'The news reflects the changing role of local authorities in waste management.
'It has become increasingly commonplace for local authorities to effectively opt out of direct kerbside waste collection for financial and efficiency reasons.'
TEXT ENDS.
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The question I would like to ask in this matter is: If we are to contract out public services like rubbish collection, and closing derelict public swimming pools on the basis that they can not make a profit from them, then why would we need the senior public servants? We could just stop paying taxes and allow the private sector to provide us with whatever services we want to purchase.
Voila no more civil or public servants, no more taxes, no more police services, no more jails, no more schools or hospitals or sewage services or public parks or public roads management services, etc etc etc.
I have news for the senior public servants making these arguments. If you continue to make these stupid arguments because you do not have the management skills to manage these services efficiently, then ultimately your job is surplus to requirements, Bye Bye and no redundancy compensation will be paid to you.
I might be idealistic on this issue, but in my world, if the private sector can make money from providing alternatives to public services in a normal market driven system, they find a way to do it from their own resources. They do not need public servants to make the arguments on their behalf.
I want to tell all civil and public servants that are making noises about profits. You should concentrate on doing your own job efficiently, because from now on I am going to make the argument that we should do away with all public services and allow what you call the efficient private sector to do their jobs. I may not get my wishes, but I will make it very difficult for you to justify your position as an inefficient manager of the provision of public services.
Hard working TDs.
Over the year’s arguments have been put forward by politicians trying to justify their extremely high salaries, and very generous expenses, long holidays etc, as to how hard they work. The general argument that they work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on behalf of their constituents is the standard mantra they use.
In the past few weeks a debate has opened on their entitlements to pensions even though they are still employed by the same employer i.e. the Irish state. One argument I heard was when an elected member of the Irish parliament likened his pension entitlements to one that would be accumulated by those elected parliamentarians that also ran private commercial companies. In the issue of a privately funded pension, it is dependent on how much you pay and on what terms you sign up to, that decides when the private pension is actually paid (but realistically it will only be paid on retirement), as opposed to the public funded pensions that are ridiculously paid when you are still in work and capable of working, even if you lose your seat, IMHO if you are young and fit enough to work then your pension should not be paid until you reach pension age. If needs be, you can sign on the dole (like everybody else) in the event that you become unemployed.
On the other hand my thoughts turned to their arguments about how hard they work for their constituents. Clearly any parliamentarian that is also working in the private sector is not totally immersed in their constituents needs. You cannot work in a private business and devote 24 hours a day to your civic duties, it’s impossible. Therefore I can only conclude that they are not actually working 24 hours per day, 7 days per week on behalf of their constituents, and on that basis they should refund the portion of their salary on a pro rata basis to those parliamentarians that have no outside private commercial interests.
I could debate the complex revenue scenarios that could arise as to the issue of parliamentarians operating private commercial companies, but I will leave that for another day.
On the other hand I wonder how the normal scenario where if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, implying a certain level of competence. We do not pay peanuts and yet we still ended up with monkeys, with no competence what so ever. How did that happen? So that’s the peanuts theory debunked.
Fianna Fail member Jim McDaid ranting and raving.
A couple of weeks ago Jim McDaid Fianna Fail TD was interviewed by Eamon Keane on Newstalk106. During the interview McDaid wondered had Fianna Fail given any thought to the fact that a Fine Gael Taoiseach might be in charge in 2016 which would mean that Fianna Fail would not run the centenary celebrations of the 1916 Rising. Today McDaid was again interviewed widely because of his refusal to give back his pension. His justification for this was he thinks the media are running the country. I think he is right in that issue, however if he really wants to have a go at the government, why does he not clearly call for the resignation of the government (after all he is a party member). Personally I want an election (like millions of others) ASAP, and not when Fianna Fail get around to it, however I do not think that who is in charge of the 1916 centenary really matters as they will have to toe a totally diplomatic line that will not offend any side of the civil war, as we are all, and always have been Irish, and no politician will ever change that, no matter what side they are on, but clearly McDaid is an example of Fianna Fail thinking as to how they play with the Irish state. They seem to believe they are the kings of Ireland, and the subjects will accept anything they hand down. Well I have news for Fianna Fail, those days are gone and you will never dominate this country again like you have in the past.
IMHO A few powerful people in Fianna Fail have destroyed this country, but you will never do it again. Your stranglehold on the institutes of the Irish state will be broken after the next election, and the gravy train will no longer roll into the Fianna Fail bandwagon. New checks and balances will be established to ensure proper account of transparency that will not facilitate any form of hiding information from the citizens. We will find out what has gone on, who gets what, and how much they get, and what for, and where rules have been broken appropriate actions will be taken. The citizens sovereignty will be established like it has never existed before, and the citizens will be the ultimate deciders of just and fair process.
Social Partnership the Irish version.
It’s been quite an eye opener to see the amount of money being paid to trade union members of state boards, http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/shane-ross/shane-ross-union-boss-takes-euro100k-fees-from-housing-quango-2151667.html. Membership of these boards (such as Fas, etc) are mirror images of the partnership processes, i.e. they include places for the social partners (ICTU and IBEC) the relevant state agencies, and where relevant the community sector.
In my former role as a community director of a Partnership company I had to meet all expenses that I incurred as a result of representing my community. I was never given any fees to participate, and as my nominating community group was completely unfunded I had to pay the costs of participation and it was substantial. http://www.shane-ross.ie/archives/584/mistress-of-inaction-on-fas/ Extract from this webpage “Headed by trade union leader Peter McLoone, they decided to tough it out. Peter was one of the many lucky luxury travellers to sample the joys of Florida. He also draws €25,000 a year as chairman of the board.
A second trade union representative, Owen Wills of the crafts union, was another to hitch hike on a €7,000 return ticket to Florida.
He is still drawing €14,000 from Fas as a nice little part-time gig.
Des Geraghty, the former Labour MEP and Siptu boss, remains perched at the top of this rotten agency.
None of these boys are budging. Nor is Danny McCoy, the big employers (Ibec) boss, drawing €14,000 a year from his sideline. Danny and Ibec are fond of lecturing us about the need for good corporate governance, national discipline and sacrifice. These noble principles obviously do not apply to any board adorned by Danny.
Danny is joined on the board by three other Ibec staff enjoying the spoils of Fas office.
None of them could have held on without political support. Both social partners — unions and employers — have their snouts in the Fas trough. “
In thinking about the fees being paid to trade union members of these boards I find it galling that they were being paid, while the community sector was not even receiving their genuine expenses.
I did make representations to both the Department of Community Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (i.e. the relevant department) and also to the nominated state agency (Pobal), however I was not successful in having anything changed. As far as I know nothing has changed in the meantime and I can guarantee one thing that has not changed and that is, community directors are still not receiving fees like the directors of Fas and the other state agencies.
Since its inception Social Partnership always treated the community sector as the poor relation, but when these fees are revealed it is quite clear we are very definitely the poor relations, and we should be grateful that we are allowed to sit at the table with these very important people. They must be very important to justify the level of fees they receive.
One of the really annoying things about this issue is the community sector always seen itself as closest to the trade union sector, however it appears the trade union sector, and in particular those at the top were receiving payments while the community sector was not even getting proper expenses, but the trade union sector never told us they were getting money from the state.
I suspect most of the ordinary trade union members that were participating in various boards were not getting any payments either. This money was only available to the players at the top of the pile, I’ll bet.
Dochas Female prison governor resigns.
Brian Purcell director of the Irish prison services was on RTEs Pat Kenny show trying to defend his organisations decisions in the female prison in Dublin. The governor of the prison has resigned citing various (unacceptable to her) decisions that she says are detrimental to the health and safety of the prisoners.
In defence of his position Mr Purcell stated a number of times, that he was not in control of the number of prisoners in the prison implying that it is judges that are responsible for sending prisoners to jail.
However it is his organisation that decides who gets early release, and therefore he is very much in control of how many prisoners are actually in the prison at any given time, and thus he has every control over the prisoners and their lives.
His arguments clearly show he has a very different philosophy on how prisoners should be dealt with, than the philosophy employed by the governor, an experienced professional of 32 years working in the prison services.
IMHO it is a case of a quango head with legal powers over a state agency, exercising those powers in a manner that says to the governor, if you do not agree with my decision then tough, you will legally abide by it, or go, and unfortunately, she decided to go.
Another interesting point in the debate was how Pat Kenny referred to her retiring as opposed to resigning. You can dress it up in whatever politically correct language you want to, but it is an unhappy resignation to me, not a happy retirement.
