BUSINESS guru Sir Gerry Robinson has admitted he wouldn’t move back to Donegal from the UK if he was doing it today – because of the high taxes here.
The Donegal-born businessman, a former boss at Granada and a TV business advisor, appeared on last night’s edition of RTE’s Prime Time.
He and Eddie Hobbs found themselves going head-to-head with union officials on the collapse of the Croke Park II Agreement.
Union members yesterday voted down the deal – which means the Government may now implement a 7% pay cut for all public sector workers in a bid to save €300M this year.
Dunfanaghy-born Sir Gerry, who set up home in Raphoe more than 15 years ago after a glittering business career, said that governments were ‘useless’ when it came to examining the spending of the State.
He said he found when he was doing a BBC programme on the British National Health Service that staff were employed to collect data that was never used – and never intended for use.
Referring to the €300M, Sir Gerry told Pat Kenny: “It’s a shame (Croke Park No vote) because there has been a lot that has happened in Ireland which has been good.
“The debt that Ireland is accumulating is enormous and the idea that you can somehow buy yourself out of that problem by creating a false economy – what have we learned?
“That’s precisely what we did before. And it’s precisely why we are in the position we are in now.
“You have to have real money; you have to have costs under control.”
He said if wages were too high in the public sector then it needed to be addressed.
“But you cannot address it in one go,” said Sir Gerry.
“It has to be addressed over a period of time. Governments are just lousy at finding real savings. €300M sounds like a lot of money but in the context of things it really isn’t.
“There has got to be hundreds of ways where we are doing things in Government that frankly don’t contribute anything.”
Pat Kenny asked the Donegal man if there was a better way then for saving money.
“Governments are not very good at looking at the fundamentals – like asking do we need to do that?,” said Sir Gerry.
He gave the British NHS example of millions of pounds being wasted there with people employed doing things that weren’t needed.
“It is that kind of saving that governments need to look at and we need to do that here over a long period of time,” said Sir Gerry.
The Donegal man said he was delighted with a member of the firefighters union who had proposed cuts to management to help make savings.
Ireland has 60 fire chiefs and 370 assistant fire chiefs. The North has one fire chief and four assistants.
“That is precisely what should happen,” said Sir Gerry at the suggestion of the involvement of workers.
“You always find the best solutions to doing things more effectively, more cheaply and more energetically if you actually manage to get the people at the sharp end involved in the process.”
Eddie Hobbs rejected the idea that there should be more taxes.
Sir Gerry said: “I moved back to Ireland 15 years ago and I am now paying at least two and a half times the tax I was paying back then.
“And I have to tell you if I was having to make the decision about living in Ireland now – as opposed to then – I wouldn’t live in Ireland.
“So the idea that you pick out a few people and beat the living daylights out of them and that is going to cure the economic problem is just not true. It’s tempting – but it’s just not true.”
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