COMMENT: Sustaining NRA's idle staff not the road to go down
Tuesday August 24 2010
THERE is a particular dilemma in working out what is the fair and proper thing to do for workers whose work has been taken away from them. This was brought to light recently by the Labour Party's Transport Spokesman Joe Costello, who queried the sense in continuing to pay €11.4 million a year in wages to the National Roads Authority's 137 staff at a time when massive budgetary constraints mean there are a lot less roadworks going on around the country and, therefore, a lot less work to be done by the staff of the NRA.
Because the nation's coffers are bare, the NRA has been forced to suspend 20 schemes on national primary roads and another 18 on national secondary roads this year alone. We are in a time when county councils don't even dare dream of getting government funding for roadworks and even local campaigners, who have fought for years to have essential works carried out on dangerous roads, accept that they will have to wait for more favourable times to press their case.
Yet, the monolith that is the NRA continues as before. This phenomenon is not confined to this single limb of the public service of course.
Udaras na Gaeltachta, for example, continues in its role as the development authority for gaeltacht regions but funding cuts mean that, like the National Roads Authority, its staff have little or no money to spend on development or to provide funding for small businesses that could create the jobs that are so desperately needed in the rural areas where they operate.
County council planning officials are in a similar situation of under-employment at a time when the country's construction industry is in a state of collapse. In some cases staff have been redeployed to other departments but, as always within the public service, change happens slowly.
All of this obviously begs the question: how many people are needed to do a job that isn't there to be done? It is commonplace in the private sector for trades to be overtaken by technology and workers, often with generations of skills and tradition behind them, are suddenly no longer required. This has happened in every industry from shoe-making to publishing and, when it happens, good workers inevitably find themselves without work.
There is always a sadness to such events but people understand and accept that businesses won't survive if they continue to pay people to do a job that no longer exists. By the same token the nation's hard-pressed taxpayers will feel entitled to ask if they should continue to pay the wages of under-employed civil servants.
Needless to say, the answer is all too obvious but it is no surprise that the government will be slow to grasp the nettle and deal with a situation that is clearly unsustainable.
