I heard last week (and It may have been in the Tribune) that we have 270 odd Regulators.

I know of the Financial Regulator, the Aviation Regulator....The Energy Regulator and a few more.

But 270 of them.

Then there is the 700 or so State Agencies.

How much of this nonsense is the taxpayer burdened with?

EVM wrote

Quote :

How much of this nonsense is the taxpayer burdened with?

(evm, I prefer your quote function)

I'd say almost all of it. How many of the regulators are paid for by those who are regulated by them? Do we consider that ethical - that we pay the mortgages of those who regulate us?

There was a discussion on this over at the Cedar Lounge blogspot:
http://tinyurl.com/2pbqql

do you not want a buidling trade regulated? etc etc

Can anyone think of any regulators that actually sound useless? Bouncy castle regulator or lawn cutting regulator?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

I heard last week (and It may have been in the Tribune) that we have 270 odd Regulators.

I know of the Financial Regulator, the Aviation Regulator....The Energy Regulator and a few more.

But 270 of them.

Then there is the 700 or so State Agencies.

How much of this nonsense is the taxpayer burdened with?

Open, transparent and democratic regulation leads to low prices as shown by the experience in the US -prior to the deregulation that is.

http://www.democracyandregulation.com/

So it's not so much the amount of regulators here, it's their closeness to those they are regulating and use of such minsnomers as "commercial confidentiality".

So yeah they're needed but they need to be reformed, along with the entire regulation system.

soubresauts wrote:

There was a discussion on this over at the Cedar Lounge blogspot:
http://tinyurl.com/2pbqql

The key word here is ’symbolic’. The agency’s exist but their power is often rhetorical and evidence of something being seen to be done rather than actually being done. Part of the reason for this is the generally - and pardon the term - chickenshit approach to issues of nationalisation and privatisation.

From the Indo today

FG seeks closure of unnecessary agencies and quangos
Fine Gael claims €50m of taxpayers' money could be saved every year through the abolition of unnecessary government agencies and quangos. The party says there are currently more than 1,000 such agencies in the state, many of which do exactly the same work. Fine Gael says the Government is setting up these quangos every time there is a problem to deal with and is then staffing many of them with political cronies in reward for services to a political party.It says there are significant overlaps in the work of agencies like the Competition Authority and the National Consumer Agency, or the National
Employment Rights Authority, the Labour Relations Committee and the Health and Safety Authority.

(full article)

Is €50m not a lot to keep a load of pen-pushers in gainful employment? Wouldn't we lose a ton of jobs if the quangos get quashed?

I'd like a list of these agencies and their personnel.

ibis wrote:

I'd like a list of these agencies and their personnel.

ibis, I tried to find such a list around Christmas time and could not find it in one place. I did find bits of lists all over the place though. There was one good one which I will try to find again.

http://www.finegael.ie/campaign/ see state bodies press release see pdf at end...

i dunno, do fg want to reduce waste or give industry free reign?

ibis wrote:

I'd like a list of these agencies and their personnel.

>> Moved to Machine Nation/Machine Nation/State Bodies >>
https://machinenation.forumakers.com/machine-nation-c2/

It could be time to accumulate these and stick them on the portal outside, just to show how many there are. If anyone would like to start making a list here then I'm in another listing mood.

A necessary one though toothless?
comreg

I think an issue we should be looking at here is where State Agencies do jobs formerly fulfilled by the Departments.

In relation to each state agency, I would like to get views from people to know on the following issues:

- does it carry out functions previously carried out by Departments?
- If not, was the department well placed to carry out such functions?
- has its creation reduced the Government's ability to implement policy?
- has its creation meant that a lacuna of knowledge and expertise has developed in the Department.
- how accountable is the agency?
- has the agency successfully filfilled the role for which it was designed?

The trickle down costs of hiving out responsibilities are manifold. The public sector is not the private sector. Harney & McDowell are ideologues who have been proven to be, like most ideologues, only half right.


In relation to employee rights, there is clearly no need for another regulator. Already we have the LRC, the Labour Court, The Labour Inspectorate, The DETE Employment Rights Publications, The EAT and greatly increased roles for unions. All that was needed was to keep the DETE web page up to date with a new URL if necessary. I suspect this new agency is because the unions feel the Labour Inspectors in the DETE weren't biased enough in favour of employees and so it is about replacing people not functions.

Working at one stage in the public sector and having to deal with numerous state bodies, it appeared that some changes were purely cosmetic and the same people continued to do the same job from the same building, but with a different letter head. I may be missing out on hidden changes - different reporting and funding arrangements perhaps. It would be most interesting to hear from anyone with an inside view.

There are some bodies that appear to have done quite good work - the Heritage Council is one - although it seems to work a bit like a "ginger group" rather than a public body.

Great questions Zhou and cactus - are the labour ones your favourite gripes Zhou? I take Pax point that regulation has its place but the extent of that is another question. If you saw Michael Martin's face last night on Q&A when Bowman pointed out that there were 800 agencies for a country our size then you might be inclined to think that naughty look of someone caught in the act might cement your belief that a lot of these agencies weren't set up for any purpose at all.

Still, is it providing some form of employment? The criminality of it would be that Education has missed out on funding because it was sunk into these agencies. School buildings, infrastructure and computers/equiptment and RESEARCH could all have been invested in with the funds possibly used to fund cul-de-sac bodies doing nothing other than using those funds to dig and fill in holes.
***End of Rant***

I think the employment agencies work well but enough is enough. I think they fulfil an inductrial relations role that was previously not performed by government.

Where the title only switches and the people remain the same, as per cactus flower, then the agency identity makes it much easier to contact the right people. Between egencies, their websites and the search functions of the internet and the main government page, it is now much easier for a member of the public to find the relevant people and the pertinent information.

Read 'em and weep.

State Agencies and Bodies

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Read 'em and weep.

State Agencies and Bodies

Its a long list but by no means 800.

Good on ya for finding that list EVM -

cactus
There's four or five 'groups' inside the Co. Cork VEC according to a friend who works there and that's just one of the county offices of the VEC in Cork - there's the city as well as two or three other county offices. And then there are 26 counties .. all these little groups need to be administered, I suppose, but perhaps some bodies or agencies are less evil than others and more useful...

I'd imagine that list, though it appears exhaustive may not be ...

Over 100 plum jobs filled during Ahern's last days - Indo article

According to the paper version of the Indo today, during Ahern's long farewell between April and May there were more than ten times (100 people) appointed to state boards than there were in the same time immediately prior to the onset of his long farewell (8 people). The paper indo on the same page (p 20) says there are more than 1000 quangos in Ireland now.

The Ministers who handed out the 100 appointments are
John Gormley 32
Micaheal Martin 33
Mary Coughlan 18
Cowen 15

The thing I learned is that some quango positions are remunerated but others are "honorarium" where they are paid modestly up to 5k a year.

Quote :

Most appointments to state boards would involve no pay, although there is a distinct benefit to one's CV

Quote :

According to one placeman: "The real benefit is in terms of networking and seeing how the system operates. You climb out of your own circle and gain insights into how different problems get addressed. It is very valuable experience"

The article refers to FG's (Leo Varadkars) intentions to push reform in the area of appointments and says

Quote :

The party wants Dáil committees to vet all minsterial appointments. Under legislation it intends to bring forward, charipersons and CEOs will require confirmation of their appointment by the Dáil. Green Minister Eamon Ryan has recently "taken some of this on board" with a cross-party nominations proposal in the the Broadcasting Bill, Mr. Varadkar conceded, but that was "very much the tip of the iceberg".

Auditor #9 wrote:

Over 100 plum jobs filled during Ahern's last days - Indo article

According to the paper version of the Indo today, during Ahern's long farewell between April and May there were more than ten times (100 people) appointed to state boards than there were in the same time immediately prior to the onset of his long farewell (8 people). The paper indo on the same page (p 20) says there are more than 1000 quangos in Ireland now.

The Ministers who handed out the 100 appointments are
John Gormley 32
Micaheal Martin 33
Mary Coughlan 18
Cowen 15

The thing I learned is that some quango positions are remunerated but others are "honorarium" where they are paid modestly up to 5k a year.

Quote :

Most appointments to state boards would involve no pay, although there is a distinct benefit to one's CV

Quote :

According to one placeman: "The real benefit is in terms of networking and seeing how the system operates. You climb out of your own circle and gain insights into how different problems get addressed. It is very valuable experience"

The article refers to FG's (Leo Varadkars) intentions to push reform in the area of appointments and says

Quote :

The party wants Dáil committees to vet all minsterial appointments. Under legislation it intends to bring forward, charipersons and CEOs will require confirmation of their appointment by the Dáil. Green Minister Eamon Ryan has recently "taken some of this on board" with a cross-party nominations proposal in the the Broadcasting Bill, Mr. Varadkar conceded, but that was "very much the tip of the iceberg".

Board Members may also be in a position of influence and have access to privileged information.

lostexpectation wrote:

http://www.finegael.ie/campaign/ see state bodies press release see pdf at end...

i dunno, do fg want to reduce waste or give industry free reign?

Unfortunately I think its the latter --give industry free reign.

I heard Varadkar on Newstalk earlier questioning why we needed unions on such 'independent' bodies. He never mentioned corporate representatives or the revolving-door types and I presume he wasn't talking about employer unions like IBEC when he he said unions...Neither, interestingly enough, do they want real consumer groups involved in such a process.

So FG are most certainly not advocating the open, transparent and democratic regulation I highlighted above.

I suppose there are two things in this thread - regulators and quangos that we're mashing together a bit. I think it might amount to a similar problem though - creating a body or group that is intended to be a regulatory entity as as solution to a problem but it ends up being an overhead itself and if the original 'solution' had been dealt with differently in the first place then you mightn't have spit holding that bluetack which is keeping that sellotape stuck to the wall. What it's supposed to be holding up is forgotten by that stage.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Read 'em and weep.

State Agencies and Bodies

Its a long list alright.

I can't understand why we need a County Enterprise Board and a VEC in every county, or why we need a Crafts Council.

However, a lot of the bodies and agencies are self-financing, either in part or in total. I think the question here is whether or not this is an efficient distribution of the regulatory function. ie if we had fewer larger bodies would their fees/subs be lower?

Heard an ad for one on the radio this morning.

Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement. (odce.ie)

Functions of the director..

Don't know when this office was established, or who carried out these functions beforehand.

Quote :

Ryanair, today called for the dismissal of the Aviation Regulator following yesterday’s disclosure that yet another travel agent/tour operator (Ronane Travel/Great Escapes), licensed by the Aviation Regulator, has ceased trading, stranding hundreds of Irish passengers overseas.

Ryanair has claimed that it is the Aviation Regulator’s office to “licence these tour operators, ensure that they have “sufficient resources” to discharge their actual and potential obligations and revoke the licences of these tour operators if he is concerned about their financial position”.

Speaking today, Ryanair’s Jim Callaghan said: “We believe that this Aviation Regulator is unfit for purpose. He has repeatedly failed to protect Irish consumers from monopoly price increases at the main Irish airports and yesterday’s failure of yet another licensed tour operator confirms that he has failed to ensure that Irish-licensed tour operators have adequate resources to meet their financial commitments, with the result that hundreds of Irish passengers are stranded overseas simply because this Aviation Regulator can’t or won’t do his job properly.

“Ryanair has previously called for the dismissal of this useless Aviation Regulator on grounds of incompetence, and yesterday’s failure of yet another (third) licensed Irish tour operator this year confirms Ryanair’s belief that this Aviation Regulator is unfit for purpose and should be dismissed.”

http://www.breakingnews.ie/business/mhqlojcwsnql/ , my bold italics.