Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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People must be realistic. People have paid into these things. The legal position is that pensions are a form of deferred remuneration. As I noted earlier, it is classified as a property right. We have a body of law which is quite clear. I refer to the most recent judgment made by Mr. Justice McMahon. He referred to this point when he said that if the Exchequer tried to go after a group of people as a means of reducing what was a legitimate expectation on their part in an unfair or disproportionate way, there is a case that can be answered in terms of the courts. The worst position for the country would be if there was some undermining of the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation, to which Deputy McDonald referred earlier, because it is emergency legislation.

Considerable changes have taken place. The public sector has shrunk in size and its pay and pensions bill has reduced remarkably. No other country in Europe has done this in the circumstances we have faced. We have done this in a framework that other countries would give their left arms for, as the Minister, Deputy Howlin, has said. We should be mindful of that and also of the fact that we need to build capacity within our public service for the future. This means being flexible in terms of bringing people in. I understand that among new entrants to the Department of Finance in the past 18 months, some 30% have come from private sector backgrounds. This is the type of interchange we need to see. We need the public sector to find out what is going on in the private sector and vice versa. We need to see flexible arrangements in order that within our public administration we have the very best people who can give us advice, as policy makers, in terms of getting the best results for the country.