We get taken for a ride on public pay

I ALWAYS crack up at the scene in The General when Brendan Gleeson’s Martin Cahill quips about unscrupulous solicitors breaking in “through the letterbox” to rob someone blind.

But it’s no joking matter how Irish taxpayers’ money is being squandered on obscene wages.

Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” philosophy is alive and well here judging by how HSE boss Paul Reid trousered €430,000 last year.

You can’t really object to anybody in the private sector charging through the nose for their services if we’re to buy into this capitalist claptrap as being the fairest system.

But public service positions should be sold on the idea of it being a pensionable job for life, albeit at lower wages.

The Greens were once warned that the foul battlefield of Irish politics was like “senior hurling”.

And with the goalposts always being moved, I’d add.

Yet it rarely happens mid-game outside of our Banana Republic in the “real world” just to please rich skippers – as some football clubs learned to their cost with the Super League fiasco.