The Irish Times reports that the HSE review of pay in Section 39 agencies has found that average pay for Section 39 staff was cut by 4.6% after the economic crash. The article includes estimates on the cost of pay restoration in the agencies. Meanwhile, Martin Wall looks at proposed new health structures with a fairly jaundiced eye.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions have a letter about executive pay (as reported in last week's news bulletin) in the letters page of the Irish Times today.
It's reported that a marked deterioration in water quality at beaches in the Dublin region is outlined in the latest Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bathing water report.
Greed, arrogance, incompetence and aggressive accounting practices by a bunch of "shysters". That's the assessment of MPs on what lay behind the collapse of the building firm Carillion.
Sometimes we spend a sizable chunk of our moments of Zen marking the departure of cultural giants (it's been a rough couple of years in that department). We do it unselfconsciously, for the most part. But not today. This week we lost the real Lois Lane and two more by the name of Tom.
Tom Wolfe, author of the wonderful Bonfire of the Vanities, had a distinguished career as magazine journalist before that 1987 novel set the world on fire. He also had an enviable sense of the sartorial that was second to none. Joan Littlewood's Stratford East theatre in London had a well deserved and formidable reputation as a home for challenging theatrical work. She unleashed Brendan Behan's wilder sensibilities and dared to stage A Whistle in the Dark, a debut full length play set among Irish exiles in Coventry by Tuam's own Tom Murphy.
The latter made it his business to capture our collective shades of darkness.
