RTÉ's Claire Byrne programme yesterday featured a discussion about the affordability of future public service pay deals, drawing on the insights of a UCD economist and a TD. The discussion (which focused largely on taxation) was prompted by the recent publication of Fiscal Context for the 34th Dáil: State of Play and Main Risks by the Parliamentary Budget Office.
The PBO publication says a higher population means 'more public service workers are needed to provide the same level of services as before', and that this adds to the 'fiscal burden', and that wages in the Irish economy are expected to grow strongly (ranging from 3.7% to 4.2%) to 2030: "If future public sector pay deals grew in line with (the current deal) and the number of workers grew in line with expected population growth, the annual increase would rise from €554.7 million in 2026 to €1,663.2 million in 2027." The full document is available HERE.
In today's Irish Times, John McManus appears to write the obituary for remote and hybrid working (WRC ruling is final nail in coffin of the right to remote working), while Mark Dixon, chief exec of FTSE‑listed International Workplace Group (one of the world’s largest office space providers), turns out to be an advocate, describing the mandating of office attendance for a certain number of days each week is 'silly stuff': “It’s actually much better to say: ‘I want everyone there on the second Thursday of the month', where you do your business reviews, meet colleagues, whether that is one day a month, four days a month...It is curating it, rather than this idea that everything can be done by chance.”
In world news today, Meta is to shut down its third-party fact-checking programme and and will lift restrictions it had previously imposed on some topics on its platform, essentially falling into line with the tech industry's renewed supplication to the incoming US administration. Those cat videos in your feed are about to get weirder.
Zen
The Madness dropped on Netlfix just before the break and, despite a sort of lull in the middle of the series, the opening and latter episodes are decent suspense thrillers. Colman Domingo is the charismatic lead, CNN-type presenter Muncie Daniels, but I think the best characters in it are the women who play an instrumental role in rescuing him from the multiple scrapes he ends up in. Gabrielle Graham, as his daughter Kallie, is especially good.
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