Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy Bruton for tabling this motion in the name of the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party. Hundreds of thousands of people on low pay are struggling to cope at the moment. The average family will pay an extra €1,000 this year in stealth charges imposed by the Government and interest rate increases. They are literally living from week to week, hoping no one gets sick and that an unexpected bill will not have to be paid. Many public servants, especially those on lower pay, are mortgaged to the maximum, on the basis of the permanent pensionable job that has been shoved down their throats by many people in the media over recent months. They never envisaged that they would have to face pay cuts when they were taking out those mortgages, as they struggled with the calculations to draw down the money from the banks in the first place.

Like everyone else, they accept we need to work together to get out of the mess that Fianna Fáil has created. They are prepared to carry part of the burden, as everyone else in society must, which has been created by the Government's incompetence over the last ten years. The fact that they have to pay twice as much as many in senior management in the public service, however, is totally unjust, especially as these same managers facilitated the irresponsible management of the economy by the Government.

Among the 655 individuals are management personnel in the Health Service Executive who failed to reform the administrative structures within the health system, which has led to a situation where front line staff are being withdrawn in hospitals and community services purely to maintain managers in jobs. Also included are managers in the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator, who failed to curb irresponsible lending by banks and other practices over the years, and managers in FÁS, who brought that organisation into disrepute, in addition to Department of Finance officials, who failed to project the correct receipts in relation to taxation during the good times. They were supposed to be watching over the banking system and monitoring the value for money reviews which were supposed to be taking place across the public service.

Deputy Bruton indicated the review body had made it critically clear that performance pay must be linked to successful completion of highly demanding and challenging tasks. Will the Minister of State explain to me how he can justify people in FÁS getting such bonuses while they were literally stealing taxpayers' money and why management within the HSE, who failed to implement reforms that would assure a quality health service, should get those bonuses while funds for front line staff were being withdrawn? How can these bonuses be justified? Bonuses should have been about reform and performance, but the Government and senior management took them to be part of basic pay.

Herein lies the fundamental flaw in relation to the bonus system. It was considered by Government as part of basic pay and not part of the incentivisation process to try to reform and overhaul the public service. It is enormously frustrating to see people on the lowest income levels within the public service, those who are struggling at the moment, cry out for reforms. Their jobs are soul destroying because of the lack of leadership within management ranks in the public service. They now have to carry the can.

When he articulated the position of the Fine Gael Party regarding public sector pay, Deputy Richard Bruton made it quite clear that anyone under €30,000 should be exempt because such people were on the lowest pay and struggling to cope and manage. Anyone on under €75,000 would be better off under the Fine Gael proposals rather than the Government proposals introduced by the Minister.

What makes this remarkably frustrating is that this decision will set back any plans to reform our public services. Public servants at the coalface are the very ones who see the flaws within the system and who seek reform. It is amazing when one goes out to meet public servants. They raise the issue of the need for public sector reform; they have been working at the coalface, they have put in the long hours and they have given commitment and service to the public. Their management have collected their bonuses on that basis and now they have received a double bonus, since the original bonus is now being calculated as part of their pay for the purposes of pay cuts.

How can the Minister of State justify a situation where, since 2000, the senior grades have received 30% more in pay than those at the coalface working on a day-to-day basis? How can the Government justify a situation where assistant secretaries in Departments received a €76,000 increase during that period, some ten times the rate of pay of a clerical officer? Clerical officers and lower grades have taken double the pay cut of senior management within the public service. This decision is seriously flawed. It will set back reform of the public service for years and will cause complete industrial turmoil over the coming months.

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