Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

In our system, senior public servants are prevented from becoming involved in public or political controversy. That is as it should be. However, that means that when some area of the public service comes in for unfair or inaccurate attack, it falls to the political masters, the Government of the day, to publicly explain and clarify what public servants do. Governments of all hues have taken this responsibility seriously, until now. The cowardly and opportunistic attitude by the Fianna Fáil Government is another reason that the staff are outside the gates.

Where has this campaign of abuse got us? Nowhere. We have a public service that is angry and fed up beyond belief. We have a national public sector strike but are no closer to dealing with the problems that Fianna Fáil and the bankers created.

Many of those commentators who have led the charge against the public service are the same commentators who have always denigrated everything public. Theirs is the ideology of deregulation which got us into this mess in the first place. Their facile idea of how to deal with this crisis is to call for tougher action.

To turn one section of society against another and to sell the myth that by targeting one group in our society the rest of us can somehow avoid bearing any of the burden of dealing with this crisis, does not add up. The crisis is too great for that. The mess that Fianna Fáil has created this time is just so large there is no way to shift it off on to someone else. If one tries to do so, one will simply create division and conflict, make the problem worse and store up trouble for the future.

Neither can we pretend that only those who caused the problem will have to pay for the problem. Unfortunately, that will not work either. The only way to deal with the financial deluge is the same way people are dealing with the other deluge - by pulling together.

This is a small country, with big problems. History tells us if we pull together we can overcome our difficulties with far less difficulty than if we pull ourselves apart. That is the real lesson of the 1980s. It is not of a tough Minister for Finance ready to inflict pain wherever he found it but of a negotiated settlement and an agreed way forward.

We need determined leadership from the Government. There is, however, more to leadership than a willingness to hand out pain to those who can least afford to take it. The system of social partnership set up in the late 1980s has had many critics. I accept there are good grounds for some of that criticism. If we turn our backs on the partnership approach, however, then it may take a long time indeed to restore it. That will be costly. People sent away from the bargaining table in bad times or brought to it for no real negotiations will not feel inclined to return to it in good times when their bargaining position is stronger.

Social partnership has to change but it is dangerous to demolish it when there are few alternatives. Those who hanker after conflict have little knowledge of the past and no sense of the future. They will take us nowhere. The way forward is through national unity and social solidarity.

In the past few months, I have addressed several trade union conferences where I have made it clear that I see no value in industrial action. I have argued the public sector pay bill will have to come down. I accept there is an urgent requirement for reform in the public service with old rigidities about deployment and recruitment coming to an end. It is my experience that message has been understood.

Unfortunately, the Government has not taken up that opportunity and appears determined to plough ahead to cut pay and go its own way. It has refused to engage in negotiations to achieve a package to reduce the public service pay bill through reform rather than unilateral action. Such an approach would have avoided the kind of industrial action we have seen today. It was cynical on the Government's part to allow this dispute to take place, particularly when we are now told arrangements have been made to reconvene talks tomorrow.

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