Irish Times
The Combat Poverty Agency is to lose 40 per cent of its staff as part of its integration into the Department of Social and Family Affairs, an Oireachtas Committee heard yesterday. The revelation was described as “very concerning” by Róisín Shortall TD of the Labour Party, one of the members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs. She and other members of the committee were highly critical of the manner in which their questions were answered by the director of the Office of Social Inclusion (OSI) Gerry Mangan. His answers were described as “unsatisfactory”, “inadequate” and “frustrating”. Catherine Hazlet, principal of the OSI said there had been 25 posts in the Agency. Four of these were temporary contracts which expired, four staff were redeployed elsewhere in the department and 2.5 vacancies had not been filled. In all 10 were lost.
[...] So, while wages don’t determine your class, wages are the means by which the majority of people attain money, and the amount of money you have affects your level of social power. And the more money you have – through wages or bonuses or speculation or business – the more likely you are to be able to affect national government policy. The less money you have, the less likely you are to be able to affect government policy. [...]