This article renews my shattered opinion of the Press/Media! The accusation of 'Treason' against us in the Examiners Editorial last week was the most hurtful experience endured by me and my family, having given 36 years of public service to the children, parents and community in my care.Diarmuid Doyle's view is a fresh and clear perspective(and humorous!).. in complete contrast to the communal mud-slinging and character assassination of misguided and vicious journalism.

What an excellent article. It shatters the private-sector sanctimony that has characterized much of the journalism on the subject to date (I'm a private sector worker, for what it's worth).

As a public sector worker I welcome this article. However I welcome it more as someone who is really concerned at the race to the bottom in the media at present. There is no analysis anymore, no attempt to offer a balanced view, or even so much as a shred of evidence to back up views. Statistics are published to push an agenda without any attempt to contextualise or explain. We in the public service are victims of this but so too is society as a whole. The pages of our papers today are full of stories about the Xfactor and Z list celebraties. Surely at least in the few pages allotted to real news we could have some balance and depth. The media complain that public servants cant be sacked - are they really suggesting that their own writers are worth their salaries these days?

Finally a reporter with open eyes. The media are creating the divide between the Public & Private sector. I have gone to College for 5 years and worked in in the Private Sector for a number of years. I decided to join the Public Service and I took a pay cut to come in. I am down at least €8000 take home pay a year with no benefits. We are getting no staff replaced and taking on more work on without complaint yet people want us to take more of a pay cut on top of the 7% we are down already from last year. Where is it going to end. We are willing to do our part and work harder. Please think about that for a moment. Balance the Burden! Reforms are needed, we do not disupt that. Stop the the slander of the majority of lower paid workers in the Public Service. Thanks Diarmuid, I can finally take a breath reading an article.

For many people in Ireland this year as they face the daunting spectre of unemployment, debt, higher taxes and some even in danger of having their homes repossessed, there will be little to celebrate this Christmas. As the dole queues lengthen by the week those fortunate enough to be in employment are increasingly having to defend themselves against unfair criticism and in some cases elements of a hostile media. This hostility is aimed primarily at public sector workers.

Any objective and impartial analysis would recognise and acknowledge the unfairness of this constant demonisation of our public sector. Without question we in Ireland have been most fortunate with the standard of our public services, indeed, it is generally accepted that it was the high standard of our education system, from primary level on, that drove much of the 'Celtic Tiger'. We should value them more. Our teachers, nurses, gardaí, firemen, those working in the civil service and local authorities are being unfairly scapegoated. They have provided services for us of the highest standard, many working unsocial hours including weekends, bank holidays and Christmas time. They were not responsible for the recession or the banking collapse yet are being pilloried and vilified as if they were.

Supposedly protected public sector workers are pitted against precariously employed private sector workers. Social welfare recipients are pitted against poorly paid immigrants. This has the potential to tear our country apart socially and at the level of the individual. We have all seen our prosperity sacrificed upon the alter of Voodoo economics, not by our teachers or nurses, but by bankers, developers and speculators.

There is, understandably, a terrible anger mounting in the country. The ordinary people are being made to pay for the arrogance, greed and hubris of our so-called political and business leaders. At this crucial juncture in our history all workers, private and public, must stand together. The combined leadership of our public and private sector unions should jointly condemn these attacks on workers from the public sector. For the record, I have never been a public sector worker, just a fair minded trade unionist and a non-begrudger.

Thank you Diarmuid Doyle, your article exposes the sustained media witch hunt against decent public service workers. I have stopped buying papers such as the Irish Independent because they do not report the news, but have opted to make the news with their own brand of propaganda . The standard of professionalism in our media has nose dived as sharply as our economy. There simply is no balance in their coverage and they are simply not interested in highlighting any type of success story. They talked us into recession and they will not stop till we are in a depression

At last some common sense!!! What passes for journalism these days is generally sensationalist crap and opinion rather than actual reporting of and analysis of facts on the ground. For RTE and others to state as a fact that Newry was swamped by our public sector workers last Tuesday just highlights how low the standards are. As Diarmuid Doyle says, many people wouldn't be caught dead working in the public service during the "boom" years but if we didn't have a general recruitment embargo in place at the moment there would be tens of thousands of them applying for public sector jobs right now. Just look at the 3000 people who applied for the 42 Defence Forces cadetship posts recently!!! Scapegoating the public sector and blaming it for all our country's ills is just a cheap and lazy option for many of our so-called commentators who conveniently ignore the fact that it was untrammelled free market forces and the greed of bankers, developers and politicians that largely got us into the mess we're in. Workers in the public sector like all other workers will have to share the burden of getting us out of this hole but if the only strategy is to attack public sector workers then we really are doomed.

Like everyone else commenting here I found the article refreshingly clear-minded and, to be honest, a genuine relief from the constant grief and guilt I've been subjected to over the past few months as someone who works in the public sector.

That said, while we rail against those vocal groups in the private sector who have come baying for blood and money in the past few months, we should probably not forget that during the boom years the roles were almost completely reversed. In the public sector we feared and complained that we weren't getting our fair share of the pie that the private sector had largely created (or "conjured" may be a better term). Some of us went on strike (largely without major success, it should be noted) so that we might be treated a little bit more like the private sector when the money was flowing in.

Diarmuid Doyle makes some very valid points, particularly about the state of journalism, in the article here, but in lauding his clarity of thought, we should probably try to emulate it too.

The problem is not the public sector, nor the private sector, it's the incompetent governance that appears to be systemic in both. And it's the attitude of "It can't be my problem" that supports the divide-and-conquer approach to management in both.

It never ceases to amaze me that people want to blame either the public or private sector for the mess in the public finances. “It was all the banks fault” or “It was all because of benchmarking”. No one seems to be commenting on the fact that it was the governments fiscal policy in successive budgets that has caused the deficit. Once off capital taxes(stamp duty,CGT,etc) were being used to finance recurring expenditure.

Are you people mad ? The trade unions ruinned our country , public sector wages are too high . our country is broke .Nobody is taking responsibility , students refuse to pay fees everyone is on the band wagon, There are 5 people in my class in college who were given appartments for their 21st Birthday , instead of paying for fees they got huge gifts .This country is a joke. I am the only one in my class with a working class accent and was told this the first week of college 3 yrs ago. I have no money for books no money to eat . I am on welfare the generous disability allowance , I am attending the brilliant public service hospital 9 yrs now and still have no cure or even a name for what I have . the media reported five years ago the differnce in price for food stuffs north of the border , they are to blane for the border rush . people in Ireland are selfish and feeling sorry for themselves .As I always say there is somebody else out there in a worse position than me so thats how I keep going . There are people living on the streets and people trapped in violent homes .I am ashamed to be Irish after reading the newspapers in last few weeks .Lets all join the blame game its fun .

Part of the disgusting aspect of public debate in Irish life has been brought to the fore by demonisation of public sector workers. The debate has been engineered by Fianna Fáil, creating scapegoats to avoid blame, and stoked by Fine Gael and the media too. I hate people using that term - the media - as ordinarily it should not be a cohesive unit, but instead something representing a spectrum of opinion. That's the case in some other countries - but not Ireland. The consensus the media reaches over issues such as the Corrib Gas project (pro-Shell and anti-those against the project) and here the public sector shows how inveterately conservative the Irish media is. That RTÉ could produce such rubbish - shows that the prejudice of people within RTÉ News management is what led to such a report being aired, not a report based on solid journalism, reporting what was actually happening. This is not reporting - this is spin, stuff dressed up as fact to suit a particular political purpose. As Mr Doyle states, it's likely to have been the parents of schoolchildren flocking en masse to Newry which was the story. The disgusting aspect of public debate is how spin can be used by government and a twisted biased and conservative media to dress anything up as news. The whole public sector pay issue has been a creation of the government - with no regard for how it's dividing the country - designed to deflect attenion from the balls they made of the country by allowing unregulated lending and a property boom where supply was way ahead of demand, with thousands of empty houses being built, and government waste on an staggering scale as well. This has a rotten corrosive insidious effect in the community - not that our politicians would care, as many are in a world of their own, or some are simply right-wingers who'd be against the public sector anyway. Why are RTÉ prepared to abandon proper principles of journalism on a story like this? Maybe it's just bad journalism alone, or perhaps it's so they are keeping the government sweet to stave off possible future cuts, as their advertising revenue plummets. Oh - aren't RTÉ public sector too?

Yeahhhh, right. 55 million Euro added to the country's overdraft, every day, to pay for the public sector. Decent skins though they are, their wages depend on the private sector earning it first and transferring it to them. Using frankly amateurish hyperbole about being "attacked" and what not ("kitten killers in 1890", oh my aching sides) is not "balanced" reporting, it's tosh. What we're getting is a smug, self-righteous refusal to accept the facts of life that if payscales are not adjusted downwards and swollen departments are not radically "downsized" and streamlined inline with what the country now needs and can afford (including taking an axe to the HSE), and if it doesn't happen decisively and soon, this country will be bankrupt and under the direct management of the ECB or IMF. That is what drives those of us concerned about the urgency of the situation and the real and immediate danger frankly up the bleedin' walls.

"Enjoy the Fruits" Jimmy? I had a whopping €4.15 cent in my bank account on Wednesday 2nd December. My wife a small fortune of lets go blow it €0.04 cent. I regret leaving the private sector. you say im enjoying this, did you read the article at all? The facts are not as simple as you. Think. (sic)

Righteous bluster from those protected from the vagaries of the free market. The rise of the free market paid for the improved conditions of Joe and Josepine Public. Joe the Private Plumber and Paddy the Private Plasterer meanwhile have gone out of business, and guess what, they can't even claim unemployment benefit. Those of us who are still keeping the doors open do so by using up what little credit is left in this economy. As the floods rise, we too will eventually probably have to join the Public family on higher ground in Newry. They will see us outside the shopping meccas sitting on the pavement. Unlike them we won't complain if they walk past our upturned caps.

Anybody with a basic knowledge of economics knows that the Irish public service is bloated, inefficient, and its costs are way out of line with European norms. Pay cuts are not an option. They are a neccessity. The sooner people like Diarmuid Doyle wake up to this reality, the better.
On an individual level, nurses, gaurds and teachers are nice people. Many of them word hard and enjoy their jobs. But collectively, the public service has too many people simply punching in the hours, doing nothing, delivering a terrrible service to the Irish taxpayer.

I, as a young professional in my 20s, worked in a public service office environment briefly during the boom years. Work practices were archaic. I quickly left, because the environment literally killed initiative and creativity, the kind of things that the private sector rewards. Diarmuid Doyle is wrong - the public sector has not been 'demonised'. Rather, through its own inaction, it has been architect of its own downfall. During the Celtic Tiger, the public sector could have reformed, become leaner, and become a hothouse of innnovation, tapping into the talents of Ireland young, educated workforce.

Instead, the public sector and its trade unions invested all their energy into bleeding as much money as possible out of the Irish taxpayer (meaning that the fruits of the boom were siphoned off), while a charade of social partnership was maintained. Even at the height of the boom, when the private sector was supposedly having it good, the public sector was earning 20% more, on average.

The bottom line is that the Irish public service is, structurally, way out of line and this has to be corrected. Public servants should be thankful that, during 2010, they will still have an easy job (in most cases), cushy hours, flexible holidays and far, far more money than their private sector peers.

The writings of a silly teenage brain.

What is also offensive is when you write: "to boost the economy of a foreign nation" - though I suppose this is just your lack of knowledge?

The people in the North East are not of a "foreign nation" - the Irish Nation refers to all of the people of Ireland and its islands.

Improve your education - there's lots of room for improvement - then you might get one of the plum jobs in the public service, Foreign Affairs 3rd Secretary perhaps (if you weren't so advanced in years).

Peadar

In the present pay cutting climate it is certain that there will be no reform in the public sector now. Expect all types of industrial action over the coming months in place of reform. As for those super brave Fianna Fail back benchers, well they will lose their seats at the next election like their councillors did at the last local election. There are simply not enough bankers and developers to save them and who else will vote for them.