EDITOR – I was disappointed to read recent commentary surrounding the forthcoming public service pay negotiations, particularly the suggestion that any increase in remuneration must be justified by delivering additional value for money.
The phrase “money for nothing” is particularly insulting when applied to the thousands of public servants who quietly keep this country functioning.
For more than 25 years, I have worked in the Irish public health service. I have witnessed extraordinary dedication, compassion and professionalism, often in circumstances that would test the patience and resilience of the most committed individuals.
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Across West Cork, nurses, healthcare assistants, porters, emergency personnel and countless other public servants work weekends, nights, Christmas mornings and bank holidays. They miss family occasions, shoulder enormous responsibilities and frequently operate within services already stretched beyond reasonable expectations.
What, precisely, constitutes value for money?
Is it the nurse who remains beyond the end of a shift because a colleague has called in sick? The hospital porter who treats a frightened patient with dignity? The healthcare worker who sacrifices Christmas morning with their children to care for somebody else’s family?
These are not hypothetical examples. They are the everyday realities of public service.
Of course, taxpayers deserve efficient and accountable public services. Nobody disputes that. But accountability must extend beyond those delivering the services to those responsible for funding, staffing and managing them.
It is remarkably convenient to demand greater productivity from frontline workers while overlooking the systemic inefficiencies, chronic staffing difficulties and bureaucratic obstacles over which those workers have little control.
Public servants do not exist outside the economic realities facing everyone else. They pay mortgages, purchase groceries, heat their homes and struggle with rising living costs just like their neighbours.
A fair pay increase is not a charitable donation from Government. Nor is it a reward for simply turning up to work. It is recognition of the responsibilities undertaken, the contribution made and the need to maintain a workforce capable of delivering essential services.
Perhaps the next time political leaders speak about value for money, they might spend a Christmas night in a hospital, accompany an ambulance crew through rural West Cork or observe the pressures faced by mental health professionals.
They might discover that the State is already receiving considerably more than it sometimes appears willing to acknowledge.
Public service is not money for nothing. It is service that too often goes unrecognised.
Brendan Hayes, Bantry.
A Scary Halloween Night
It’s a dark and scary Halloween night
And boys and girls you’re in for a terrible Scary fright
and the moon is hidden by the
Darkness of the night and
The wind is scratching at your door
And spooky shadows creep across your floor, and you better hide it’ll be a scary and dark Halloween night and
The darkness whispers and the hairy
Werewolves are howling under the glowing moonlight
and the cold wind is howling at your door and the
Shadows creep across your floor
And the witches let out a lonely cry
Beneath the black and dark sky and
The branches scratch against the glass
As ghostly shapes begin to pass and
The trees are tapping on your door
As the little children watch the ghostly figures pass
in the darkness of the night
And the night is deep and holds its breath in fear and
While the darkness keeps its secrets close and still
And the little children are hiding under their beds and they’re waiting for the sunlight but the darkness has come to life on this scary and spooky Halloween night and
The creepy pumpkins grin with jagged teeth
And candles are flickering in the dark night
And the cold wind blows between the trees
And whispers scary secrets on this Halloween night so
Boys and girls you better take care and watch out for the darkness on this very scary and spooky Halloween night.
David P Carroll, Skibbereen.
Papal change to calendar was daylight robbery
EDITOR – Since 1582, the anniversary of a most unusual deed in time history occurs – the ‘theft’ by a pope of ten days from the calendar.
At midnight of October 4 in that year, the next day became October 15.
A sixth century monk, Dionysius Exiguus, abhorring the celebration through the Julian calendar of the Roman empire noted for vile persecution of Christians, rededicated each year of a similar calendar – Anno Domini, (AD), ‘during the year of the (Christian) Lord’ .
A millennium onwards from Dionysius’ time, Pope Gregory XIII, in consultation with astronomers Father Christopher Clavius and Doctor Aloysius Lilius, discovered a small annual time fault which, cumulatively over centuries, was causing problems with the setting of Easter Sunday.
On October 4 AD 1582, he decided to ‘dock’ ten days from that Christian calendar, since universally adopted, especially for international transport and even in countries where Christianity would be a minority religion.
This calendar is known today as the Gregorian calendar.
Many property renters considered for a time that they were being short-changed. A notable Spanish religious, Saint Teresa of Avila, died on that very night and her feast day became October 15.
Philip Joyce, Clonakilty.
