Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Taoiseach and his Minister for Finance have announced the establishment of an bord snip nua specifically to address public service numbers and efficiency. How can the Taoiseach stand over the time of an assistant principal officer being devoted to ministering to Independent Deputies as part of a governmental sweetheart deal? Is this not precisely the kind of waste of Civil Service time that ought to be addressed by some of the legions of Ministers of State who are already very well paid, rather than a civil servant? Such a civil servant earns a salary in the region of €100,000 — the same as Dáil Deputies. If the Taoiseach was serious about cutting back economically, how can he justify this? The Taoiseach may say that the person does not spend much time, but sorting out the various issues that Deputy Healy-Rae raises from time to time would require a degree of ingenuity and thoughtfulness that could take up days or even weeks of a civil servant's time to address fully. I do not understand how the Taoiseach can justify using a civil servant for this arrangement in this time of cutbacks when language teachers are being cut in schools. There are other cutbacks across a range of services, yet we continue to have a senior civil servant, much of whose time is devoted to ministering to these individuals.

The Equality Authority is part of a specific agreement that Deputy Lowry has spoken about in the context of the authority decentralising to Roscrea in his constituency. Some 15 staff of the authority have already been decentralised there, while 25 others are staying in Dublin. Given the cutbacks, what economic sense does it make to have half and half arrangements whereby people are given travel expenses for travelling between Roscrea and Dublin? It is part of the botched decentralisation programme, which has cost the taxpayer up to €1.5 billion so far. Can we afford this kind of largesse, given the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves?

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