Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the maintenance of the commitment to development aid.

I return to the subject of the public service. There is a notion propagated, more outside the House than inside, in certain newspapers that we have a vast, bloated public service. The reality is that compared to other countries the numbers in the public service are limited. It is barely more than 10% of the workforce, or if one includes teachers and those who work in hospitals, between 14% and 15%. There is an ideological bias and I am sorry that Fine Gael seems to have bought into this thinking to a certain extent.

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