Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

An interesting detail of this Bill is that it defines Oireachtas Members as public servants. Therefore, we are discussing something that affects us as well as tens of thousands of others.

This legislation is not based on any hostility to public servants. In my own case, rather like the Minister of State, Deputy Dick Roche, I first entered the public service 35 years ago, on a good starting salary of £3,000 per year. Public servant is the title of which I am most proud as it is a unifying thread that joins up a number of different roles. My experience of the Civil Service has been a very good one. It contains many good, able and highly motivated people who have played an enormous role, for example, in negotiating and sustaining our EU membership, maintaining and vindicating a peaceful solution to the problem of Northern Ireland and also as a motor of social partnership, which last I regard as having been mainly a good thing even though it may be in difficulties at present. They have worked at streamlining the tax system and, most recently, showed their involvement at local level in the emergency co-ordination with regard to flooding. These included officials of the OPW, the Army and Civil Defence, gardaí, community welfare officers and volunteers. There are of course also excellent teachers, nurses and Oireachtas workers.

Change, reform and economies are needed on an ongoing basis. However, at most levels and by most international comparisons our public servants are well rewarded. In approximately ten years their numbers increased from significantly more than 200,000 to significantly more than 300,000. It is worth quoting some salary figure progressions between 2000 and 2009. I shall quote the original currency of the Irish pound for 2000 and the euro for 2009. One can change the punt into euro. Lower tier county managers earned £56,000 in 2000 and €136,000 in 2009. A staff officer earned the equivalent of €23,000 and now earns almost €37,000. This refers to the starting point of the scale. A Secretary General earned the equivalent of €121,000 in 2000 and now earns €221,000. Engineers grade 3 are up from €22,000 to €32,000, a rather smaller increase of 45%. A clerical officer, standard scale, earned €15,227 and now earns €23,174.

The salaries of Deputies may interest us in this House. In 2000 the starting figure was £39,000 or €49,000; today it is €100,000. Senators earned £24,000 and today earn €70,000.

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