In yesterday's Business Post Michael Brennan cast an analytical eye over the situation in Irish Water and the utility's plans to bring county council staff into direct employment.
A longer analysis piece in the same paper by Daniel Murray looks at how the 'chronic lack' of resources in our public health system has been exposed by the pandemic, while Susan O’Keeffe writes "If we want health service reform, we must listen to frontline workers." I'll make both of those texts available upon request, as it's behind the BP pay wall.
Elsewhere, Ingrid Miley rounded up the story so far about union ballots on the Building Momentum pay deal on Friday, as did Martin Wall in The Irish Times. Meanwhile, Congress has warned that hundreds of thousands of workers could lose out on redundancy payments if their employment is terminated because time spent claiming the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) will not count when calculating entitlements.
Zen
Maybe because it was Valentine's Day, my better half and I decided to re-watch an old favourite,The Goodbye Girl last night. Set in an unglamorous New York in the mid '70s, with an effortlessly charismatic cast (Marsha Mason, Richard Dreyfuss and Quinn Cummings), and snappy Neil (The Odd Couple) Simon dialogue. I still remember being brought to see it in the crumbling Stephen's Green cinema in 1978 (the site now occupied by the shopping centre). I always think of it as a forerunner to When Harry Met Sally. Here's a clip, my favourite scene from the film, Paula McFadden's first encounter with Elliott Garfield, and a masterclass in negotiation. Gets me every time.
Like