Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for attending. Rather than making an opening statement, I will put questions, as that will be more productive. The first major section of the Minister's statement dealt with public pay and pensions. It would be remiss of us not to deal with the issue of payments to retired public servants. They will be paid today but there are no funds in the kitty to pay them on 6 and 20 December and the Minister must introduce a Supplementary Estimate to pay them. An important aspect of the Department's work is dealing with public finances. Surely it was obvious six months ago when officials knew how many people had retired that this would be necessary. Why has the Minister left it so late? The Dáil will consider the Supplementary Estimate next Thursday, possibly in time for the payments to be processed to arrive in pensioners' bank accounts the following week. Why did the Minister leave it so late to make a statement about this? This should have been done in an orderly, planned manner months ago. If the Minister did not know about this before now, there is something wrong in the system.

Of the 30,000 people who have left the public service over the past few years, the Supplementary Estimate will deal with 3,000 civil servants. It will not deal with pensions in-----