Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

As a stand-alone initiative, this set of proposals is indefensible. When the Minister first started to talk about the need for savings of €4 billion, his first thoughts were about an adjustment of €2.5 billion on the spending side. He rightly recognised that this was too little and the implication of a further €1.5 billion coming from tax was not a tenable position.

Has he not travelled dramatically, however, from ending up in a position where the only cut of any substance is in the public service pay bill? We were led to believe the McCarthy report was driving the whole efficiency agenda. Every Department, we were told, was going to have to eliminate waste or find efficiencies equivalent to the McCarthy report's recommendations or more, namely, €5.5 billion in savings, excluding pay. This was the agenda that was to drive the Minister's reform programme. He was taking a fundamentally new approach and we were going to see for the first time a serious attempt to rationalise delivery systems and the whole efficiency agenda being taken on. We were going to see more done with less. This was a radical programme, which we were led to believe was being embarked upon, so that there would be a smaller leaner public service, with the Minister making provision for a scaled reduction of 17,000.

That was a challenging agenda, one that could invite a response to the effect that here at last was a Government that had learned the lessons of its foolishness in previous years and taken on the difficult task of reforming the way we deliver our public services. Is it not extraordinary that, having set out his stall and brought in Professor McCarthy and many estimable people to support it and put his key staff to the task, the Minister ignored the entire agenda that was set out for him, and turned instead to the soft targets, those on welfare and on the public service payroll? Effectively, in what the Minister had billed as one of the most difficult budgets to be put together, 75% paid nothing towards the adjustment. It was all confined to the other 25%.

Worse than that, he asked those on the lowest incomes to take proportionately the biggest cut in their take-home pay. Those on the lowest wage are to have a full 5% reduction in their take-home pay, persons on €125,000 will have a 4% cut while those in the middle will be cut by 3%. Given all the wisdom assembled around the Cabinet table and the myriads of people behind each Minister why was it decided that those on the lowest wage should be asked to take the highest cut? It defies logic and fairness. People looking in, whether public or private sector, cannot fathom why the Minister would decide that those on lowest incomes should proportionately lose most. A cleaner in this House, on a salary of €21,000, is being asked to take the full brunt of this cut, whereas it does not apply with the same degree of severity as one goes up the income scale. There is neither justice nor fairness in that.

Then, once again, we find judges are left out. How can we countenance such a situation out? Why should those who are among some of the highest paid people in the land and who sit in judgment on the rest, be outside this? Deputy Alan Shatter has offered to frame a constitutional change, and we will be having such an initiative next year for children. Why not deal with this and let us not have some privileged group, on the outside, not experiencing the same cuts?

I am sure the Minister and I share similar experiences at political clinic level, with low-paid and middle grade public servants attending, telling of their ambitions to pay their mortgages and car loans and put their children through college. They are facing not one, but two cuts, even those on very modest pay. Why does the Minister believe such people should bear the full brunt of the cuts? Why has he not graded contributions, in the way our party proposed, as regards dealing with the finances? I cannot understand the fairness of the Minister's approach. I have come across many such cases, as I am sure the Minister will, when he gets time to attend his advice centres, and he will see that these are genuine people. They were sucked along in the "sustainable economy" that the Minister's predecessors talked about, the property bubble, and they paid appalling prices for houses. They are now being screwed to the wall.

This is very tough and the way the budget has been put together bears all the hallmarks, not of a genuine attempt to find a way that is fair, getting the broadest shoulders to take the greatest adjustment, but rather of something that was cobbled together at the last minute. Having failed with regard to the more ambitious programme of reform he wanted to deliver, the Minister had to fall back on this, and it bears all the hallmarks of that.

I believe the Minister will be forced to back down with regard to the hit being imposed on those at the lowest income levels. As he was forced to back down on the pensions levy, he will be forced to back down on this, although perhaps not today or tomorrow, since he might have his numbers in a row to get him through this. However, over time as he tries to sit down, as he says he wants to, with the representatives of those employed in the public service to address the challenge of reform, getting more with less, he will not be able to sell this as an element. It defies belief why he has included it. Perhaps he has some type of Machiavellian plan to the effect that this is about a bargaining chip he could take off the table. It is unfair and unjust and it puts a great many people through heartache. It cannot be defended as a measure that reflects the Minister's previous pronouncements with regard to expecting those with the broadest shoulders to take the burden and trying to protect the vulnerable. These were the terms being used by the Minister and his colleagues, and this was the thinking we were led to believe was informing the budget. All that language and commitment was thrown out as the Minister cobbled together this proposal.

The Minister talked here about the importance and commitment of the public service, and the ethic that inspires it. However, his Government has, single-handedly, undermined that ethic. It did it through benchmarking, by paying out money without reform. Now, with our backs to the wall, he is once again taking back money, again without reform. This was done with decentralisation when for political reasons it was decided that people could be moved around, like pawns on a board, to satisfy short-term political needs. This destroyed some of the skills base of the public service which would now stand us in good stead as we try to reform delivery mechanisms. Those people were abandoned and let disappear into the woodwork because Fianna Fáil wanted to fulfil a political goal of delivering 10,000 jobs to marginal constituencies. That was an abuse of the public service.

The Government then introduced its reforms of the HSE and refused to do what clearly needed to be done. If there is to be a super command and control bureaucracy, some of the middle management structures must be taken out in order to achieve savings. The Government refused to accept that, so how can it now convince the public that it wants to champion professional standards in the public service? It has been consistently telling people in the public service that it does care about professional standards, or the quality of leadership within Departments. It was content to scatter people to the four winds to meet political needs. Rather than caring about performance and reform, it was content to throw away money without asking for reform to be delivered.

This is the background to what has us in this hole. It explains why it is so appalling when the political leadership created the problem in our public service, that the Minister turns to the lowest paid to carry the biggest burden to correct it. That is what people find so appalling. It is not just the injustice of it, but also the inactivity and negligence of the Government by the Minister's party that put us in this hole we are now trying to address. McCarthy was an encouraging sign. We were to have 43 major-----

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