Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I am also delighted to have the opportunity to speak on the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Bill 2011. This will see the Department of Finance effectively divided into a Department for spending and a Department for cutting. Everybody seems to be in favour of reform as it is the flavour of the month and the new buzz word. The problem is there is little agreement on what the reform should entail. Few can define it and despite various reports, nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. That is not a problem from today or yesterday but has been ongoing for a long time.

The new Minister responsible for public reform will have responsibility to figure this out, which will not be easy. I wish Deputy Howlin well in his new role as Minister, and he stated that the Bill is the first step towards the creation of a revitalised and customer-focused public service in the country and placing a stronger focus on how we manage our public expenditure to get the best possible impact for available resources. Along with the speech and the roadmap for this process, this is the mission statement.

Many hundreds of thousands of good and decent people work in the public service and I am not out to knock them today. The mission statement which should exist has been badly sidetracked and lost. The creation of a revitalised and customer-focused public service should be the goal, as most of the public service is not customer-focused. I do not wish to show disrespect to public servants but I have a hope and enthusiasm that we can get this country back on its feet. As an elected Member, I have the responsibility to argue that all public servants at all levels should perform.

In fairness, most of these people are career public servants who joined the service at an early age with the best of intentions but the system has worn them down. All public servants should have a "refresher course" where they could be put into private businesses for a couple of weeks every year to gain a basic knowledge of the need and demands posed on entrepreneurs and business people. I differ from the previous speakers, Deputies Ross and Boyd Barrett. I work with both of them in the Technical Group and although we share many ideas, we are broad enough to differ in many ways also. There are fundamental problems in this issue which should have been sorted out long ago.

The new Minister responsible for public reform must figure out what is wrong. I wish both him and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, well as they try to help our country's finances recover despite the heavy hand of our so-called friends in Europe. I have remarked many times that with friends like those, one does not need enemies. We must be more vocal in getting the message out that they are not helping us; at least the IMF provides money at a reasonable cost but those in the European Union are making a profit, despite the fact that their bankers caused half the problem. I am worried about the ideological differences between the Ministers and the two parties in coalition. There is an immediate clash.

There will be a cross-departmental body to implement all the numerous reports done on public sector reform. People were paid much money to produce these reports but we now have more of them than anything else. One politician will be accountable for the delivery of reform and although I wish him well, I also wish him God's speed.

On the negative side, the process will surely get bogged down before it even starts. The new Department will be staffed by the same civil servants that have not delivered much to date. I do not mean to be disrespectful but I am just talking about the system and how they are engaged. This can affect many Ministers or ideological people in a Department; I know people who left the service because they would have ended up in the insane house if they remained in it. They could not put up with the archaic systems.

Will there be a turf war between the two Ministers? The culture of civil servants must shift from providing exclusively for their own Minister to a more comprehensive view of the joint functions of the Department, which will be a significant culture shock. I have seen during my time in this House and participating in committees how civil servants defer to their Minister. I was disgusted, annoyed and shocked when the pension levy was introduced and fought within my party at the time against it. For whom was a U-turn done? It was not done for county council workers on the ground, librarians or ordinary people in classrooms but for senior civil servants.

That was a despicable move and I told the former Minister, Deputy Brian Lenihan, that he had been hijacked. I received no answer but when I challenged the measure, I was told that it affected 120 civil servants; in the end it affected nearly 700. The pension levy was expensive and punitive enough for the ordinary people but the fact that senior public servants could get away with a reduction in its effect left a bad taste in the mouths of ordinary workers. It was a retrograde step, of which there are more which we probably do not know about. Nobody can tell me such action is right.

Once the honeymoon is over there is a risk of division reflecting the points of divergence between the coalition partners. We saw that last week with questions on the Order of Business and elsewhere regarding efforts by another Minister, Deputy Richard Bruton. In fairness to that Minister, he is seeking a consultation period on the employment regulation orders and registered employment agreements etc. These systems were negotiated, as noted by Deputy Ross, by the so-called social partnership. It was a great idea when it was started by the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, but it got badly sidetracked and carried away. As Deputy Ross argued, there is no point in blaming trade unions, which had a job to do in representing members; they did it well and we should take our hats off to them for doing so.

I blame the likes of the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, the Construction Industry Federation and the Small Firms Associations. They became removed from the ordinary people who could not afford to be members of such groups. People, including union members, were put on boards and participated in a gravy train. We saw what happened when quangos were set up with directors placed on boards; for example, money was put in place for training of ordinary workers in the HSE but it ended up in SIPTU and we have not yet heard where it has been spent. It was not put where it was supposed to go but spent on airline tickets and nights in hotels around the world. The media describe junkets being taken by politicians as well.

We must consider the roles of Secretaries General of Departments and chief executives of semi-State bodies. The wages of bankers are capped at €500,000 and we should have a maximum wage for public servants. I compliment the Government on returning the minimum wage to its former level, although that was not the problem. The employment regulation orders and registered employment agreements set a basic minimum wage at €20 or €25 per hour, with extra money for disturbance and upset etc. These facets were negotiated in a bubble which has burst, so we must try to attain real reform.

I wish both Ministers well but they must tackle such problems. Taxpayers and those with no jobs, as well as young people in our schools and colleges with enthusiasm and a good education, need a chance to deliver. They will do so if allowed, as will ordinary businesses which have been shackled with remnants of social partnership. We had legislation covering joint labour committees and bodies such as National Employment Rights Authority were set up; there is a problem in this country in that when we introduce new legislation we forget to get rid of the bodies created by older laws. There are quangos and organisations which have outgrown their usefulness as a result, leading to expenditure we cannot afford. We must sit up and smell the coffee.

We cannot blame the IMF and others for looking at such matters because we have closed our eyes to them for the past number of years. If we are to prosper again or get any sense of hope, such problems must be tackled head on.

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