Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I am seriously alarmed at the approach being taken by the Government on public sector pay. In the past three months the Minister has committed to €2 billion extra pay, to be paid by taxpayers, between the September payment just ten weeks ago and the commitments to be made in the next two years. Can the Minister afford to make that payment? Does he believe the public finances can afford that payment? Surely if we learned anything from benchmarking it was that one has to put a reform agenda on the table before one makes pay commitments rather than afterwards. Why has the Minister made those commitments and is only now talking about a review within the public service and of the proposed reform and new policy agendas to get better efficiency? Surely he should have taken the reverse approach and brought forward before the budget a radical reform agenda, which would see the restructuring of very expensive administrative overheads in many State agencies.

Does the Minister not think it is lunacy to preside over a situation whereby when the HSE is short of money it closes beds and leaves staff to whom we are paying top dollar sitting around doing very little when patients are turned away? What sort of public pay policy is it that results in that situation?

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