Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

Yes, we were to have 43 major rationalisations, but how many did the Minister adopt? None. We were to have a major assault on the administrative budgets of Departments. What has the Minister done? He has taken 1% out of the departmental administrative budgets. We were to have an efficiency agenda that was to deliver close to €3 billion in cuts, but what did the Minister do? He abandoned 85% of that. Where were the 15 absent members working to deliver a smarter system, so that they could eliminate the waste and inefficiency in their areas and start to give us something better? They just funked it. They ran for the hills and opted instead for the simple thing of hitting public pay. That is what people find hard to believe.

Maybe it is this broader agenda of competitiveness that the Minister has, and I note that he said he is now going to review the pay of commercial semi-State bodies. It is about time. The chief executive of Coillte is on €475,000 - how can the Minister justify that? If he wants people to accept that the Government is taking competitiveness seriously, where is his assault on the utility prices presented by monopolies which are way out of line internationally? Where is the assault on commercial rents that are killing businesses? Where is the assault on the cost of credit? Last week, the banks told us that despite NAMA and the taxpayer shouldering all of this, it will not come down one whit as a result of the effort we are making. Where is the confrontation on the rip-off we see every day in our shops? The Minister can see the price comparisons as well as I can. A bottle of whiskey in Northern Ireland costs less than half the price of a bottle down here. That is not explained by tax because there are many other factors.

People would be convinced that the Government was trying to deal with rip-offs and unfair advantage being taken of them if they had cheaper college registration fees and rents, as well as lower prices across the board. If the Minister was leading a campaign to bring down costs, people would say: "Well, at least, I can see what he is driving at. This is about making our economy more effective right across the board. We are all going to be in this together." There is none of that, however. It is solely targeted at one group and the Minister is not delivering the competitiveness agenda.

Despite the National Competitiveness Council setting out an annual agenda for what needs to be done, the Government has never produced an action plan for competitiveness. It has failed again this year. It is supposed to be a theme underlying the budget, but as far as the Minister is concerned, only one group is undermining our competitiveness, which is public service workers. That is not the truth, however. If the Minister wants to see everyone putting their shoulder to the wheel and confronting the economic problems, he cannot have a budget that so blatantly singles out one group, pretending that it is at the heart of the problem. The Minister says it is damaging to have banter between the public and private sectors, and he blames the media for creating it. However, he is fuelling it by not having a balanced budget and not recognising that we must confront costs everywhere if we are to get out of this hole. The Government is unwilling to do things smarter by making efficiency the key. This is not all about cutting pay; it must also be about doing things more cleverly so that we do not have to cut the pay or entitlements of those working on the front line. That is what I find depressing about the budget.

The Minister found €1 billion in welfare cuts and more when one sees what are masquerading as health cuts. He found over €1 billion from pay cuts, but when he tried to squeeze something out of the top-heavy bureaucracy, he only got €500 million. That was not balanced and was clearly not what was intended. We need to confront that issue.

The Minister has introduced changes in pensions, but people deserve to see the colour of the Minister's thinking on this matter. Taking someone at the bottom end of the scale, actuarially, the value of a cleaner's pension is probably 8% or a maximum of 10%. The Minister has already hit them with a 6% pension levy, and he is now hitting them with 7% on top of that. He says he will remove the indexation arrangements they had in the past, which he claims will cut the cost of pensions by 20%. If he is whittling away at some of the benefits, is there not a significant category of worker which is paying the pension levy without having a commensurate benefit?

What does the Minister say about new recruits? We are told that anyone who joins the public service now will be on a new regime. Will they have to pay the pension levy or not? The Minister has raised the pension issue, so we need to have a much more detailed debate than he is offering. People deserve to see what is happening. Given the way the Minister is eroding the State's contribution to public service pensions, he is whittling away the benefits while at the same time asking them to-----

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