Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

I have serious concerns about the approach being taken by the Government, which is planning a swathe of staff cuts across Departments. A total of 5,000 public sector jobs will go if this plan is successful. It is a crude approach and there is a danger that the wrong cuts will worsen our position and damage, rather than assist, our chances of recovery. The need to invest in skills and technology does not reduce because of an economic downturn and in a more competitive environment, it becomes more acute.

Much attention has rightly been given to cutbacks affecting the old, the sick and the disabled, but I am greatly concerned by the absence of a strategic approach to what is proposed. Forfás has expressed alarm at the scenario where investment in information and communications technology puts Ireland almost at the bottom of the EU league. While the Government is expanding broadband penetration, Ireland is still lagging behind most OECD countries. Broadband access is still not available in some parts of the State and there is no sign of the long promised national broadband scheme. This is untenable and I have fears that the cutbacks announced yesterday will impact in ways that will hold us back as a community and disable our economic development.

In a recent paper on next generation networks, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources grandly promised €435 million in capital investment to tackle the digital divide, but that amount had been declared in the national development plan and since then the Taoiseach has said the allocation is subject to budgetary constraints. How much of that budget will survive? There is a great deal of debate about the knowledge society but, at the end of the day, the amount the Government is willing to invest will affect the delivery of aspirations. That includes investing in staff and expertise, yet we are aware, on the basis of recent freedom of information requests, that staff in the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources are under "extreme pressure". Since 2006 officials have been warning of inadequacies in staffing and that it was "fast approaching major difficulties". The people were not in place to carry out Government commitments in a complex, technical and essential area of public policy.

We have regions that cannot access broadband, yet in Northern Ireland access is universal. When he was Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Dermot Ahern promised that we would lead the way and be to the forefront in broadband development.

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