Have done some courses where the same applied - and have heard of others. Where employees are paid their full salary during courses, the courses are paid by the state and they are given additional holidays and study time for doing the course and get extra pay on completion of the course.

I'd like to know to what extent that skews the "public sector workers are better educated" argument.

There is probably an argument for the cost of educational courses to be treated as 'benefit in kind'.

I fail to understand this argument. Only a small number of all public sector jobs would would require a degree. Your employer/ the taxpayer doesn't have to pay you a higher salary because you have extra qualifications. If your office cleaner plays the guitar she won't get a higher rate, the only thing you want from her is do clean the place.

We can also argue who should be able to earn more money, someone with a history degree or a chef. Certain skills are rated very high and just because you can't learn them at a university, doesn't mean they are inferior and not in high demand.

Being discussed on RTE Frontline.

I think you may be underestimating the number of public service jobs that need a degree. For example, the public service employees huge numbers of teachers, and they all require a degree. Then there are other groups who obviously require a degree, but are in smaller numbers, such as doctors, lawyers, lecturers, etc.

And of course these days all newly-qualified nurses have degrees. I don't know whether they are making full use of all their medical training that they get during the nursing degree. I would hope that they are now doing a lot of jobs that were previously done by doctors. But you won't easily find a newly-qualified nurse without a degree.

There are also jobs that don't necessarily require a degree, but you may struggle to find a suitably qualified person who doesn't have one. For example, most accountants have a degree these days, even if you don't have to have a degree to qualify as an accountant. You might be able to run the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, or the National Treasury Management Agency without any accountants, but you probably don't want to.

Similarly, you probably want some civil engineers in the National Roads Authority, some statisticians in the CSO, some economists in the ESRI, some scientists in Science Foundation Ireland, and at least someone with a degree in the Higher Education Authority. Maybe some of these bodies should be shut down, but as long as you keep them open you will need specialist staff with formal qualifications.

Good post BG.

Just to develop the point a bit... why are so many nurses qualified as midwives? According to these figures there are 13,100 active qualified midwives in the Health Service, but only about 75,000 children were born in 2011. I would have thought the average midwife would be involved in more than 6 births a week rather than 6 births a year! Surplus qualifications?

AFAIK you need a midwife qualification to be a community nurse, it's a skill you might not use day to day but I believe it is required nonetheless. This might account for the large number ?

Of my sister's friends (plus some of my own) who did nursing almost all either did midwifery or public health nursing etc. It seems to be unsocial hours, lowish pay and general "I'm better than that" attitude.
I recall my sister saying they'd discussed the Croke Park agreement or pay cuts and her friend indignantly reminded her about the years of education she had done. Reminds me of a post on Boards where a dentist justifying his pay cited his 500+ points!

I don't believe you need midwifery to be a community nurse though I'm open to correction

Not to be a community nurse, it used to be the case you had to in order to be a Public Health nurse, now you don't have to, all you need to do is do a small maternity module.

While I'm here can we approx the figure including LA's and all Semi's to around 450,000 ?

House prices have collapsed to pre 2000 levels in many locations now. Ergo somebody somewhere is earning at 2007/8 rates while the largest cost in their lifetime is back at 1998 levels. Or to put it another way, when can we see the cost savings from the property crash passed on via the public wage bill?

Public Sector = Public Service + Commercial State Agencies (ESB, Bord Gais, BnaM etc etc)

In terms of numbers, I suspect that there are a large proportion of the 13.100 midwives working part time. I doubt that total is full time equivalents - rather total numbers employed for any proportion of the week. Because the midwife profession is almost exclusively female, you will have an unusually large number utilising job share or work share conditions.

Keep in mind also that you can't simply correlate number of births against number of midwives as they spend a significant proportion of their time on ante-natal and post-natal care. For instance, I have spent a total of 6 hours of my life utilising the time of a publicly-funded midwife while in labour and birth (2 children so far) but probably 10 times that in utilising their time in ante-natal. post-natal and pediatric care.

Re public health nurses, as far as I know, you still need a full midwife qualification to work as a PHN.

p.s. plus a first time mother spends an average of 12 - 15 hours in labour - so it is perfectly possible for a midwife working 36 hours a week in a delivery suite to only attend 4 births in that time period.

No. You don't(anymore). For definite. It changed a few years ago. ( And that, folks is my 2000th post ! )

Ta da!

I'm thinking of joining the 2000 club during the week but my Pin usage has dropped due to time constraints. I'll see if I have something to add. I'm hoping this thread stays sensible. I asked about the payment for public versus private as it interests me. The first response I got was a string of government bodies unrelated to my question.
I could leave my public service job and get a job in the private sector on the same money. Why don't I? Because I love my job, I love the interaction with the public and I love the service I provide. Not only that I love the feed back from customers I deal with. I did it before Croke Park with a passion and I've done it since with a passion. Would I stay with a 10% cut. Yes. 20%, time to dust off the CV as my morale at that stage would have been driven through the floor. Could you replace me with a monkey, yes. Would anyone know the difference? Within 24 hours as I'm front line and specialised. Re: Public servants taking sickys and people in back offices doing the IT crossword, stamp it out and to hell with any union that resists such crap.
Am I a pre madonna with a Because I'm worth it attitude. You tell me. 4th level qualification in my specialised area with 15 years experience, numerous software training courses I've often done in front of the telly of my own bat and an attitude of doing my job to the best of my ability for 50K a year. Yes I am fucking worth it. If people want to come out with blanket statements like the bullshit I've listened to for the last couple of years about the public service then be my guest. I've listened to everything from sack them all and make then re apply for their jobs in an open competition to cut their pay by 50% and the good ones will stay, there are plenty of people to take their jobs!!
In my view, the problem with the public service is summed up by the word INEFFICIENT. Deal with that in a sensible way. Don't deal with it by saying leave by the end of February or we will hit your pension, whilst the rest have to stay and watch wasters on the same money as them cruise by and rot the place from the inside out.
I'm off to bed.