Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

This week, we have seen the worst of weather and the best of people, the worst of the elements and the best of human nature. Faced with the worst floods anyone can remember, we have seen neighbours helping neighbours, communities working together and voluntary organisations helping out. As a country, we are at our best when we work together to deal with our problems. At the centre of these efforts have been public servants. I refer to fire crews, ambulance crews, the Army, local authority workers, the Garda and even the Naval Service. They have been working through all hours and in terrible conditions to deal with a national emergency.

What a striking contrast to the picture of public servants that has been systematically and unfairly painted for the past 12 months and more. It seems impossible to reconcile the caricature that has been drawn of 300,000 time-serving bureaucrats with the reality that has been seen on our streets and shown on our screens for the past week. Yet today, outside the areas directly affected, these same public servants are on strike, in dispute with a Government that has sought conflict rather than agreement.

Today's strike could and should have been averted. The staff of the State who are on strike today are on strike because of the unfair way in which they have been treated by the Fianna Fáil Government, because they are sick and tired of being belittled by the scapegoaters and because Fianna Fáil has cynically failed to negotiate a way of avoiding the strike.

For the past month, I have been putting to the Taoiseach the idea that there should be a national agreement for recovery with five elements: a coherent jobs strategy; a home guarantee; a fair budget; a negotiated agreement to secure savings in the public sector wage bill; and, in return for the latter, industrial peace. An agreement constructed on the basis of these five points would not only deliver the savings that are needed, but send a clear signal the world that Ireland is united in its determination to deal with its problems in a serious way.

No effort was made by Fianna Fáil to respond to those proposals. All last week, the Government sat on its hands as the strike approached and made no attempt to avoid it. It was as if the Government wanted the strike to take place, to save the day's pay and to allow it to blow over before resuming negotiations. Nothing could be more cynical.

That cynicism compounds the sense of unfairness. This is the third time in a year that Fianna Fáil has reduced the pay of State employees. The so-called pension levy, the income levies in the April budget and now again. Three successive cuts and still nobody has been called to book for the disaster in the banks and no Minister has resigned over economic mismanagement and waste.

On top of that, Fianna Fáil has colluded in the belittling of public servants. For months, there has been a sustained campaign of ballyragging, abuse and denigration targeted at the public sector. It is as if it were somehow the nurse in the accident and emergency department who caused the Exchequer deficit or the rank and file gardaí who caused the problems in the banks.

The Fianna Fáil Government allowed and encouraged this campaign and failed in its duty to defend the State's employees against unfair attack.

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