BOMBASTIC COMMENT

You can always rely on The Sunday Independent for a bit of bombast. And, on the week that’s in it, who better than Shane Ross to deliver the coup de grace judgment on Budget 2011?

“Did you miss the wonderful news in the Budget? You did? Well, the pay of semi-state bosses is to be capped at €250,000.

Welcome to the brave new world of sharing the burden. In this time of poverty, even Ireland’s oligarchs must limit themselves to five grand a week.

And if you believe that, you will believe anything.

Bravo for Brian Cowen and the Budget spinners. The rhetoric was splendid. News of the attack on semi-state salaries made good soundbites. The word went out: our overpaid, State-fed fat cats are finally in the frame.

Good headlines are often followed by depressing small print.

The news was truly epoch- breaking, as long as you did not ask how the dramatic capping would affect the current semi-state incumbents.”

Ross then goes on to lacerate semi-state bosses such as ESB head honcho Padraig McManus, who is on €752,000 a year and Declan Collier of the DAA, who has to be content with a paltry €568,000.

“Ireland’s oligarchs, still squatting in the banks and the semi-states, are not sharing the burden,” Ross writes.