Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I second the amendment.

We are just trying to avoid a race to the bottom. We want to ensure that what has happened in other places does not happen to the Irish postal service in the effort to undercut everybody. We want to ensure we get efficiency and quality as well as good value. We are talking about value for money here, but we do not want to see advertisements for half the rates the people doing the job at the moment are getting, with people queuing up for these jobs. In the event quality is lost as regards a postal job, it ceases to be a career and the incumbent is no longer a focal point and pillar of the community, while all that is achieved, perhaps, is a greater saving in costs. There is an assumption that those costs will benefit the consumer. That was the assumption behind the privatisation of Eircom and what we finished up with was a couple of dozen extra millionaires. That is always a difficulty.

I know ComReg will be insisting on quality and I do not say this lightly, but there is only so much that can be done. We have seen many areas of work in this country that have simply become places through which people just pass, without seeing any career opportunities. The question is whether we want to ensure this area is seen to provide a real career opportunity, where people want to develop the service and see it improving, or just a place to work while they are looking around for a better job. That is what happens if one just creates a yellow pack career structure where people are simply taken on at a minimum wage and kept for as long as possible until they get a job somewhere else. In the event, the employer is losing out on the quality of the people he or she is employing.

I have heard this argument before, where people question how much quality is needed. The reality is that intelligent, bright and well-qualified people are needed in every job. I want to ensure we are not just going down the wrong road in a race to the bottom. We have seen this happen in other places and it does not improve the quality of life for anybody. All it does is increase the profits for whoever is running the operation. Eircom is the best example I can think of. Just reflect on how many times it has been sold in the last ten years, and how much money it made for everybody along the way. The first time it was sold for €250 million and we did not even get capital gains tax from this. That is the law of the land and I am only using this as a reference point. When we were doing that I recall standing here and making the same speech. I remember asking about who was going to bring broadband to Belmullet. This was before the advent of Corrib gas. It was not going to be worth anyone's while, and I remember saying at the time that Sir Anthony O'Reilly would not do it.

We are transposing a European directive, the general thrust of which I support despite that in many ways the legislation goes against the grain for me. However, I recognise where we are at. I welcome competition in the public sector, which should be in place to make it work properly. However, what I want is not competition at any price but competition based on fairness, quality, career, good value and community reference points.