Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I have until 5.30 p.m., at which point I need to return to the office. I believe we have dealt with increments. The Deputy has the notion that we should stop increments for everyone. There is an issue of intergenerational solidarity. People on the top of the salary scale do not get further increments. That money is bagged, if one likes. It is an old idea that as one matures in one's job and acquires new skills, one goes up the scale. That is as it has been since the foundation of the State. We are in difficult times and we need to consider how we can do it. I have said I have an open view on all these matters but there is a legal imperative. I have explained to the committee that the legal advice I have is that it is a contractual issue and any action in that regard would be challenged. However, it is something we might look at.

The Deputy just throws out figures. An increment for a teacher is not 5% of salary. I believe the teacher's starting salary for a recent graduate who has spent four years in college is reasonable but not excessive. We have reduced it by 10%, as the Deputy knows. We have looked at entry grade salaries across the private sector and some are quite low. However, there are many graduate entry grades that would be analogous to that. I am mindful of impacting repeatedly on entry grades because we need to ensure if we make adjustments, they are done on a fair basis across everyone in the public service. If we are to make adjustments in salary, we should not discriminate between how the salary is acquired and whether it is acquired in the public sphere or the private sphere. The way to make everyone in society make a fair contribution is through general taxation. However, that is a debate we can have.

I am mindful of costs in my Department. The Department was created last year and is getting new functions. For example, we are determined to pull the procurement service into the Department and I have advertised for a new procurement officer. Some very good private sector people have applied for that. We have not gone through the process and I do not know who will emerge. Anybody applying for these new jobs in my Department is on contract for a fixed term and we expect results. That is how we will run the Department. My Department is not a typical Department that has been there forever and there will be expansion. We are pulling in new services, including shared services and procurement. We have created the economic advisory service. All external reviews of the public service have pointed to a deficiency in economic analysis and we are recruiting world-class young economics graduates to advise not just my Department but across the sphere. These will add to initial start-up costs as we do that, but I believe they will have a very significant impact on savings in future.

The Deputy's final point was on health. We have all seen that a reduction in health expenditure is very painful. We are doing three things simultaneously, which is difficult. First, we are downsizing numbers. The biggest component of public service numbers is in the health area, which has been significantly downsized while trying to keep services going. Comparing health services internationally is difficult because what comprises health services differs.

When I was Minister for Health in the mid-1990s, we had a very undeveloped child support service. We have invested hugely, and I think properly and wisely, in that area and invested an awful lot in supports for the elderly that did not exist 15 years ago. So we have a different type of health service. In addition, it was a very patchy health service at that stage, with health boards having different priorities. I remember when I asked the current Secretary General of the Department of Health to move from being CEO of the North Western Health Board, which was very successful and where he was doing a superb job, to the North Eastern Health Board. In respect of some of the deficiencies in the North Eastern Health Board at the time, I remember him telling me that he went into health centres that had dry toilets. One found a disparity of service because many services had grown up based on the voluntary effort that had migrated to the public service over time. The idea of an integrated service was the HSE's great concept. The problem was that it built a superstructure on top of the existing structures.

We are now trying to radically reform health and produce more services for more people because the number of medical card demands, the elderly population and the number of children is very high. Thankfully, all these developments are good but they are putting huge pressure on the health service. It is a great challenge to reduce money and numbers and expand services and, at the same time, bring about transformational reform through bringing more services into the primary care sector, reducing the demand on the acute sector, which is very expensive, and introducing universal health insurance so that we have a single-tier health service rather than a two-tier one.