Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

The anger and frustration of people in the public service is very understandable today. This is the second time in a year that people are being asked to take a substantial cut in their pay. There is a sense, too, that those who have been at the core of creating this crisis in our country have not been brought to book in the regulatory, banking or political systems. This builds frustration and anger and beyond that, there is no strategy coming from government as to how pain offered up now can resolve the problems of this economy.

One will search in vain for any sign of new vision coming from the Minister, including in his comments today. He stated that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions was not forced into this. None of us will know if this is the case because we have not been sitting around the table to hear the tone and approach taken in the talks. Many people believe that issues congress sought to put on the table, namely, to have a substantial employment dimension to the budget and show a willingness to address the collapse for some workers of pension entitlements, have been rebuffed.

There is no willingness on the part of Government to look beyond the agenda of cutting to see how we can create a fair social contract for the future. Fairness is a vital ingredient. I agree, as I have signalled already to the Minister, that we must find €1.3 billion in cuts to the public service pay bill. I also believe - I did not hear it from the Minister in his response - that there needs to be a dividend for those who make such a sacrifice, as certain benchmarks are achieved, for example, benchmarks on the reform of the public service, and the correction of the public finances. Then there would be some sense of fairness and balance. There needs to be a commitment that sacrifices would be proportionate to one's ability to pay. We have not heard from the Minister about his thinking on how sacrifice should be contributed. If those who are in the most difficult circumstances on the lowest pay felt that was the case, there might be a broader support for the Minister's approach.

There needs also to come from Government a broad-based approach to tackling competitiveness. It is an illusion to think that competitiveness is just about pay. It is also about rents that are only upwardly mobile, rents that are excessive, boardroom pay that is excessive, excessive utility prices that are controlled by Ministers, excessive rate bills and excessive compliance costs. If that was part of a genuine commitment by Government to tackle the competitiveness agenda on a broad base, there would be more belief among workers that while they are being asked to make a sacrifice, a commensurate sacrifice is being asked and demanded in other areas.

The National Competitiveness Council produced figures that show we have some of the highest costs for professional services, including legal and accountancy services, compared to our competitors. Those issues have to be addressed on a par. There is no sense that the Government has an action plan to address those issues either legislatively or by any other method. Balance must be brought into the equation. Most importantly, we need a strategy to convince people that we will not be back in the same position next year, looking for €4 billion from the same source, seeking to make cuts in the social welfare budget and the public service pay bill, and that we will not have moved on. That is at the core of the difference between those in Government and those on the Opposition benches who believe that the financial problems are real and that while they are a constraint on devising a strategy, we must now do so to tackle the employment crisis. That is the big difference. If the Minister wants a key to get people from the trade union movement and the wider community on board, we have to put that goal up in lights, that this is about making room for initiatives that will tackle employment.

We have our backs to the wall. Regardless of whether we like it, 20% has been taken out of our economy. If those of us who are strong enough to resist change do so, then those who are weakest will take all the slack. It will be those people who lose their jobs, who are faced with unemployment or emigration and who will take the burden of this recession. As a community we cannot afford that. It is not a question of the Minister calling for talks; it has already been signalled by the trade union movement that it is willing to enter talks. It is vital that the talks are on a broad agenda. I accept that the issue of public service pay must be confronted, but the talks must also focus on a broader agenda of the sort of country we should be trying to create out of the ashes of this disaster.

Let us not pretend that the problems in the public service have not been actively created by Government itself. That is the reality. There has been a huge void at the heart of the State in the way it has approached the public service in recent years. Decentralisation was a cynical move that was not about delivering professional standards or high performance in the public service, but all about pandering to short-term political needs. It was soft-option politics. Benchmarking was another such example of where Ministers have led the public service into the very crisis we now face. One cannot blame trade unions for accepting benchmarking awards that were dished out without demanding performance in return. The responsibility for demanding performance in return lay with Government. Decision after decision taken by Government has underlined that the Government does not care about professional standards in the public service. We need only look at the way the Health Service Executive and decentralisation were handled. Some of the things that damaged the public service include the refusal to have proper performance measures for people who manage our public services and for people who announce strategies. Those problems have been created not by the trade unions but by the Government.

I do not exonerate the trade unions either. There has been willingness within the social partnership in recent years by the unions to see their role as to resist reform rather than to promote it but, ultimately, responsibility for driving social partnership to achieve new visions lies with Government. In recent years, the Government has not put an ambitious programme of reform on the agenda for the social partners. It has been part of the cosy circle, the soft approach to regulation and rip off that was spawned in recent years by a social partnership that was too dominated by producer interests. We, but in particular the Government, created that tendency to pretend that all social partnership was about was protecting producer interests. That has done huge damage to us.

At this time of crisis we must rekindle social partnership to address a huge challenge, one of unprecedented proportions. This is an opportunity for social partnership to prove its worth. We have not had a challenge to social partnership since the 1980s that makes it worth our while to find an agreement, one that is about more than just solving the Government's problem of the next three weeks. That is what has been missing in this debate, from what I can gather from the exchanges between the trade union movement and the Government. The debate has been predominantly about how the Government is going to solve its problem for the next three weeks. We need to look well beyond that. We need to have a genuine programme of public service reform.

I have heard the Minister and his two predecessors speak about public service reform, but nothing happened. The Minister is repeating what many have said, that we do not need repetitive services in every agency across the board. They can be shared and delivered more cost effectively, but where is the tool that has been put in place to deliver that? Who is driving that agenda? Last week, we learned from the McCarthy group that no one is driving that agenda. The only chance that it might happen is if the Department of Finance squeezes the budget and then maybe the idea will crop up.

We need someone to drive a vision for the public service. At the core of that vision we must have a system where people bid for their money, where managers are held accountable for results, on which they should report, and that they are given the tools to manage. I call it the BART system. It is a smart way in that one bids, one is accountable, one reports and one has the tools to deliver. That has not been introduced to the public service. Until the Government commits to that, we will retain talented people trapped in a public service system that is failing them.

I do not see any radical change of direction evident in the Minister's statement. There has to be a radical change of direction and that starts with the way budgets are put together. Amazingly, Minister for Finance after Minister for Finance has refused to reform that and it is the single greatest blunder made by the Government throughout its period of office. One has to change that if one is to genuinely start a new approach.

This is a time when we need a shared vision, one of a more authentic Ireland than the one created by the Celtic tiger years, one that is really tackling pension equity, for example, which is on the trade union agenda, job creation, which is also on the trade union agenda, and a fair health service, not a two-tier health service. Those are things we need to set as our ambitions and then one can start to bring people along. We need a sense of direction in which we are being led. Social partnership will be at its best when there is a clear vision that we are all addressing. However, the Government has not created that sense of vision. That is the big void that remains. Until the Government creates that sense of vision, we will continue to run into problems of misunderstanding, anger and frustration whereby some people feel they are being asked to carry the entire burden. That cannot be allowed. The forthcoming budget must set out a sharing of the burden. We must ask those at the top of the scale who have been able to shelter their income to pay more. We must have fairness in how we address so many elements of our code. Then we can start to bring people with us. At the core we must have a vision for creating employment.

If we in this time of crisis condemn another generation to emigration and unemployment, as occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, political leadership will have failed dismally. This is a vital period. I agree with the Minister that we do not want an escalation of the dispute, nor do we want to pitch the private sector against the public sector. However, we need to lay the groundwork for reform to which all people feel they can contribute. To date, however, the Government has not done so.

This strike may achieve nothing but it may make those of us in the political arena think more constructively about how we can create an agenda that will command the loyalty and support of all. This is so important at this time.

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