Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

WB Yeats wrote: "All changed, changed utterly". The presentation of the Estimates by the Government is in many ways the final paragraph on a chapter in the Government's history from the autumn which has been a disaster. It has been a disaster in political terms for the Government and its two parties, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party. However, more importantly it has been a disastrous period for many families and businesses throughout the country. The challenge for Government is not the difficulty of leading when times are good. The challenge of leadership is to lead when things are difficult and times are hard. On that test the Taoiseach and his Ministers fail.

They failed the old-age pensioners, schoolchildren and people on hospital trolleys today. They failed the many public servants who at the moment have become the butt of ferocious attack by various commentators because, of course, when people are angry and bewildered they look around for someone to blame. Although in reality people value their teachers, nurses and doctors, the Government's mismanagement is unleashing a torrent of abuse against public servants because of the way it has managed to create among the elite at the top echelons of the public service, as with elite in the Dáil among the top echelons of the Ministers, a climate of privilege and salary entitlement that is beyond the dreams of most ordinary families.

Many of the people at the top echelons of the Government and the Civil Service earn in excess of €200,000. It is understandable that people losing their employment should feel incredibly angry that the taxes they paid during the good years and the borrowing we are now undertaking as a country are being used to pay those kinds of extraordinary remuneration packages that in many instances are simply not deserved and were created because, apparently, they paralleled the private sector. I do not know many companies in the private sector queuing up to employ top civil servants or former Ministers at a rate of €200,000 plus. Why would they? They get far better people for far less than that. The Government has been unable to deal with the crisis of the unfair structures it has allowed through benchmarking and the fiasco of decentralisation. This has harmed the core of what was a very good public service ethos. The Government has allowed that to become disastrously lopsided in favour of the upper echelons of the public service, who were always central to the negotiations on benchmarking and decentralisation. One of the marks of this Estimate about that philosophy that is carried through, to which I really object, is that within the Health Estimate there is a provision of over €70 million for the new consultants' deal.

The new consultants' deal will offer consultants who opt for it a salary of €240,000 plus for approximately 37 or 38 hours per week. Many consultants in busy hospitals will work more than that and will not watch the clock. However it is known in every hospital in the country that this deal is particularly attractive to those who are soon to retire or who do not do much private work. They will take this deal, retire in a couple of years and get a greatly enhanced pension. The Tánaiste, Deputy Harney, has an ideology of privatising our health service and making a two-tier health service.

The €74 million is the heart of this Estimate. The Minister, Deputy Harney, says she will hang tough and not pay it until she is sure the consultants will work harder, but elective operations are being cancelled around the country. What do consultants whose procedures and operations have been cancelled do? They go to the medical common room and read the newspaper because they have nothing else to do. If all their elective procedures are transferred to the national treatment purchase fund in the private hospital down the road, what do they do? They take up another newspaper and read it. This is the insanity the Minister for Health and Children has delivered for the health service.

All around the country one meets people in the health service, doctors, nurses and administrators, who are depressed, defeated and seriously worried about the ethos of a public service which is vanishing. Some public servants who have given great service to this country at a reasonable price and at value for money are almost afraid to say they work in the public services. The ideology of the failed Progressive Democrats has done that. Although the party collapsed, it lives on in this crazy Estimate. The consultants will get this large lump of money while the young women who ought to be getting the vaccine for cancer will be denied it. If properly costed by the health service and delivered as in other countries, the vaccination programme would cost well under €10 million, whereas consultants will be paid to sit around and do nothing in the structures the Minister has set up.

It is an extraordinary comment on Ireland. It is also one of the reasons that as a country during the Celtic tiger years we had a lot of soft power. People looked to us and admired us. Now our administration, like our economic figures, is full of uncertainty, disorganisation and chaos in certain areas, which is infecting the others. We are losing our soft power, the one thing we had as a small country. We have no friends left, and people can rightly say the Government has done this to us.

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