Summary: <a href="https://twitter.com/dsmooney" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Derek Mooney</a> is a public affairs and communications adviser as well as a former adviser to the Irish government. He’s a columnist on <a href="http://www.broadsheet.ie/author/derek-mooney/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Broadsheet.ie</a> and <a href="https://sluggerotoole.com/author/derek-mooney/" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Slugger O’Toole</a>. <br> ***<br> In the last podcast, I was talking to Tom Geraghty of the PSEU, that’s the union that represents higher level public sector workers. The interview was in the aftermath of the PSEU annual conference, where Tom was demanding a reversal of the pay cuts of 2009. There was quite lot of comment online about the interview, most of it was not very sympathetic to Tom Geraghty.<br> I said that I would come back to that topic, and I want to say a few things, but hang on, because there are actually some things that I want to say that are more supportive of Tom than you might expect.<br> But I can’t say that I agreed with him on everything, you might not be too surprised at that if you remember the interview. Some of the things that Tom said, that I couldn’t agree with, and judging by the reaction online, I’m not alone, one of those things that I disagreed with was Tom saying that the Public Sector was pro active in using new technology. I really don’t know how he gets this.<br> I wrote a book about governance in Ireland eight years ago, and one of the many examples of the terrible deployment of technology in the government sector was the Residential Tenancies Board, the RTB. Their job is to keep and publish a register of landlords and rented homes. It’s not that difficult.<br> At that time, in 2009. I criticised the fact that the RTB weren’t even able to put a simple database online with a basic search function. They <a href="https://portal.rtb.ie/public_registrations.aspx" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">published the register in raw Microsoft Excel files, and they used dozens of them, because they were on Microsoft Excel 97</a>, which has a file limit of 65 thousand lines, so anyone who wanted to use the full register had to download dozens of these files.<br> It is trivially easy to create an SQL database from the information, and I could make a searchable front end for the data that would work on any computer or mobile phone in an afternoon, but I’ve just had a look at the RTB website again. Nine years later, the RTB is still using a 20-year-old version of Microsoft Excel to create massive files that have to be downloaded to be read. It’s awkward and difficult to use at best. If you are trying use it on your phone, like, say a student or other tenant who has limited space and budget, it’s hopelessly useless.<br> Now hang on, I do have something positive to say about Tom Geraghty’s demands.<br> But before that, Tom challenged me when I mentioned cases of people working in the public service suspended on pay for years. <a href="http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/two-gardai-have-been-suspended-for-the-past-seven-years-admits-fitzgerald-35637951.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Richard Boyd Barrett TD got a response from the Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald</a> last month saying one garda sergeant has been suspended from duty on pay, since March 2010, and another garda has been suspended since June 2010.<br> And a prison officer has been paid a third of a million euro since July 2010 despite having not worked a day, he’s been suspended all that time. The Tánaiste also confirmed that a further three gardaí have been suspended since 2012, with three more gardaí since 2013; another two gardaí have been suspended since 2014, with another six gardaí suspended since 2015.<br> All of them are being paid out of taxpayers’ money and none of them are doing a tap of work. Anyone working in the private sector could not be anything other than gobsmacked by this abuse. But I can tell you from personal experience this type of thing is not rare in the public sector.<br> I don’t have to tell anyone outside the public sec...
