Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The discussion have not been confined to public service pay. If I inadvertently gave that impression, it was certainly not my intention. I tried to convey in my speech the urgency of addressing the need for an effective saving in public sector pay in order to prepare for the Estimates next year. The discussions are not confined to public sector pay. The Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, myself and other Ministers have engaged with all of the social partners such as business, agriculture, the social pillar and the trade union movement. The discussions have covered both public service pay and the transformation agenda, but they have also examined the wider budgetary and economic questions to which Deputy Bruton referred. We have specifically examined questions which he raised in the course of his contribution, such as how to support jobs, different sectors of the economy and so on. The whole question of fairness as raised by Deputy Burton is also being examined. All these issues have been raised under the social partnership discussions.

The Government hosts social partnership discussions, but the Government is also an employer. The Deputy asked whether the issue of redeployment has been raised in the past few weeks. This issue has been raised by the Government since the inception of the moratorium. The moratorium is a crude instrument. For the moratorium to be effective, redeployment is required. However, redeployment in the absence of agreement will prompt industrial action which the House is discussing today. I am not sure if Deputy Bruton is suggesting that we should have imposed redeployment and provoked earlier industrial action, or whether we should have done what are doing, which is to engage with the different bodies that represent public service workers on how we can have an effective scheme of redeployment which will minimise the disruption caused by the moratorium and allow us to focus staff in the most important areas that require priority.

The Government has maintained a substantial capital programme throughout this particular recession. As a proportion of GDP, it is one of the largest programmes in any EU member state. We must also add the cost of public private partnership programmes to that, which will ultimately be borne by the taxpayer through a different financial mechanism. There is a substantial volume of public investment in this economy. Deputy Bruton is proposing the substantial disposal of a large number of assets that are owned by the State and the reinvestment from the proceeds of those assets in other lines of investment.

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