ValueIreland.com

Last night on the Joe Duffy Highly Recommended RTE programme, we were told how one of their contributors had arranged and paid for her funeral up front so that it would save the stress and expense for her family at the time of her death.

The panel on the show acknowledged that the contributor was very noble in her intentions and based on the numbers, would save her family some money. €33000 invested now to pay for a funeral that would be expected to cost €12,000 in 30 years times.

But, is she really saving her family money? Assuming the same 30 years and same initial money up front, the €3,300 invested now at a fixed deposit rate of 6% annually, there would be a return of over €14,000 after the 30 years.

Here’s a link to an article that was in a recent You and Your Money magazine, highlighted in their recent newsletter. The article discusses how best to hire a tradesperson for any work that you may need done around the house.

The original Value Ireland tips article can be read here.

Value Ireland got a link today from Bock The Robber. It’s an interesting blog that I hadn’t seen before. There’s an excellent blog today on the current cancer scandals ongoing in our Irish hospitals - check it out here. There’s also a number of links to other commentary on the same subject on a few other blogs as well - definitely worth checking out.

I’ve found it interesting in the last few weeks to compare the harsh treatment of Steve Staunton versus the softly softly approach taken to Mary Harney.

Steve Staunton lost a couple of football games, and shock horror, didn’t qualify us for the European Championship next year. Yet, he had 40,000 people booing him at Croke Park during the last few Ireland games. He had newspaper journalists hounding him and his bosses about whether he’d be resigning, or whether he’d be fired. He had RTE staff having a go at him at every opportunity, with Eamonn Dunphy talking to anyone who listened about how Steve should get the boot.

But the hapless Steve Staunton didn’t oversee an organisation that puts peoples lives at risk.

Specifically Mary Harney has overseen the disaster that has been breast cancer diagnosis in the last couple of weeks at Portlaoise Hospital, but more consistently lives are endangered through badly managed and dirty hospitals.

Even worse are the smokescreens that Mary and her cronies are putting up left right and centre once we find out about their cock-ups. What does it matter who knew, or didn’t know, or when they found out - if you’re in charge, the buck stops with you. If she didn’t know, she should go. If she did know, even too late, she should still go. And all their grandstanding at the moment is merely aiming to distract the majority of the country from the true seriousness of their cock-ups.

And where are the press who cared so much about the future of Irish soccer not so long ago? Where are the Irish people booing Minister Harney for the shocking system she’s overseeing? Where’s the outcry in the media calling for her head? Where’s RTE star journalists hounding her out of her job? Why have Eamonn Dunphy harassing Steve Staunton at every turn to save Irish soccer, but not have Charlie Bird or Bryan Dobson going after Mary Harney to safeguard the lives of Irish women?

As someone who is consistently focused on customer service, I always believe that a true measure of how much a service provider cares about you and your custom is how they react when there’s something wrong and they receive a complaint. By her actions last week, Mary Harney is showing us all that she really doesn’t care.

And it is in this area that the most shocking behaviour of all was evident last week. She finally knew that there was a problem, but merely sought apportion blame elsewhere rather than actually take ownership of the complaints and the issue at hand and try to resolve things. At a time when Mary Harney knew of the problems, she still entrusted the management of the resolution to the problems to the same people who had screwed up in the first place.

For that alone, not learning from past mistakes, that Mary Harney should resign - we know she’ll never be fired by Bertie. In the immortal words of George W. Bush, “fool me once….”