David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I am not sure what I can say about public sector reform in two minutes. I welcome the Minister to the House. My party would have shared a broad view with the Labour Party, at least before the election, about the need to ensure that public sector reform was about meeting the needs of citizens. That is the ultimate benchmark in terms of what we need to do in terms of achieving savings. We all accept that we need to achieve savings in public spending, but it is most important that we protect frontline services and ensure that the citizens of the State have access to high-quality public services.

Recently I was disappointed to hear the Minister state that public services have been largely unaffected by the cutbacks or, as he put it, by "budgetary consolidation" by the previous Government. There have been cutbacks, for example, in health, education, policing, in special needs assistants and in the hospitals. For example, there is a crisis in many hospitals across the country due to a shortage of junior doctors and nurses.