Madam, – As one who devoted an entire career to help in the creation of our State forests, using our people’s money, I am saddened to learn that those forests may now be sacrificed as fodder to satisfy private greed.
It is wrong to equate State forests with “the family silver”. Family silver does not provide a perpetually sustainable return in the form of cash, jobs and industry – sawmills, board mills and fuel – to say nothing of free relaxation, recreation, landscape quality and conservation.
I thought that we were contributing to the permanent and growing betterment of the whole people of Ireland.
Were we misled?
And why must we always imitate our British neighbours in such matters?
Economists know nothing about real life.
Let us make the best of what we have; not pawn it, non-redeemably.
Further, and vitally, our State forest service has neither the staff nor the resources to adequately police and control private management of all our forests. Private management always aims at short-term profits at the expense of longer-term social benefits. — Yours etc,
Madam, – The McCarthy report published on April 20th shows a clear anti-ESB bias and would, if implemented, see the end of ESB to some mysterious end that Mr McCarthy does not outline.
A clear example of bias relates to the “Employee Remuneration” section at Appendix 1 of the report. At the top of this appendix is the ESB (not at the top because of alphabetical order or any other obvious criteria but it certainly gets attention!). Here Mr McCarthy has the “employer pension contribution as a % of pay” at 24.8 per cent.
This is factually, and seriously, wrong. The correct figure is 16.5 per cent and the figure Mr McCarthy uses is a cumulative figure for pension contributions which includes staff contributions of 8.5 per cent.
Down in the middle of the page Mr McCarthy makes no such error when he correctly outlines the relevant employer figure for Eirgrid as 16.3 per cent.
This is relevant because it creates the impression that ESB as employer pays significantly more into the ESB pension than Eirgrid does; and it also has the useful effect from Mr McCarthy’s point of view of closing the overall cost per employee between Eirgrid and ESB to negligible proportions.
Elsewhere, Mr McCarthy proposes moving ESB Transmission and Hydro generation assets to the same Eirgrid without ascribing any reason.
The facts are that Eirgrid costs for employees are significantly higher than ESB and the McCarthy “mistake” in relation to pension masks this. As a result this key fact has not been reported. Eirgrid earnings per employee are 12-13 per cent higher than ESB.
Finally, staff in ESB worked with management to eliminate a €2 billion pension deficit in 2010, the biggest pension deficit in Irish pensions history caused by the market crash of 2008.
The McCarthy report makes no mention of this. Staff accepted an effective 30 per cent cut in benefits, introduced a new career average revalued earnings scheme and broke with pay parity as the method of indexation for retired members.
They also agreed a three-year pay and pension freeze in this context. Staff in Eirgrid still enjoy the benefits of a defined benefit final salary pension scheme, the indexation of pension increases remains linked to pay and there is no pay or pension freeze or reduction in benefits whatsoever.
The least the public, and the staff in ESB who have served this country so well for generations, deserve is a lack of bias and correct factual information from a report seeking to structurally eliminate ESB.
Mr McCarthy has seriously failed this test. – Yours, etc,