Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

The sad part of this Bill is that we have to have it at all. It is also sad that it has taken so long for the message to sink in and for the Government to recognise that there was a problem. We now have fire brigade legislation that is attempting to deal with issues that were not dealt with over the past six or seven years. The public are now being hammered and must take a punishment beating for the inadequacies of the Government, for the inadequacies of the legislation that was in place, for the non-existence of regulation and for the non-observance of rules and regulations put in place during the DIRT inquiry. I cannot understand how the country is being held to ransom in this fashion.

We hear appeals for patriotism from the other side of the House and for people to put up their hands and accept some of the blame for what has gone wrong. What in God's name is this place coming to? Surely the power and the responsibility rest with the Government. Accountability for the actions of the Financial Regulator, the Department of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank also rests with the Government. All these bodies report to the Government, so what was going on? We heard lectures over the weekend that the Opposition should tone things down, as they are causing a disturbance and upsetting the equilibrium of the Government. This is a load of rubbish. Where have the Government Deputies been? What have they been doing? Do they not understand what they have done to the country?

The first hit has been on the public service, which is to blame for all this. The public service is taking the punishment beating in the first instance. Did the public servants not do what they were told by the Government? Were they not working in accordance with the instructions of the Government? Have they not observed the rules to the letter? Were they not given benchmarking by the Government? Did the Government not recognise their existence? Did it not recognise the importance of having more public servants? For example, the health service contains an extra 33,000 public servants. Are these people not working in accordance with Government policy?

How is this proposal intended to affect the competitiveness of this economy? How does this affect the price of our goods and services as we sell them abroad? Have we not listened to lectures from the Government over the past few years stating that we would no longer be able to compete in the manufacturing sector and the services sector, and that we now had to look for high technology jobs? Is the Government now recognising that we must go back to the old reliables? Where now is the much vaunted high-wage economy? Where is the richest country in the world? Now that there have been two elections fought on the basis that we were the richest country in the world, what has happened since?

Have the Ministers of State on that side of the House looked into their hearts and asked whether they know everything they should know about these issues?

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