Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

While I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this motion, if ever I saw a "no motion" it is this one because the facts as outlined last night by the Minister are quite clear. Significant reductions have been applied to the remuneration of both grades, 14% in the case of the grade of deputy secretary and 11.8% in the case of the grade of assistant secretary on top of the pensions levy and other reductions that apply to all public servants. It is not correct that there was a large disparity. The facts as put forward last night show that those grades take reductions of a much higher level than was noted or perhaps not clearly noted.

Earlier, Deputy Ciarán Lynch said that we had stirred public vilification of public servants. This is quite untrue and I am tired of hearing it. Every e-mail I get states that we have stirred up vilification against teachers. I was a teacher and never worked as hard in my life as when I was a teacher. It is amazing to put into e-mails the idea that I would publicly vilify teachers. There was no public stirring up of vilification against public service workers. That is a line they have been sold, swallowed, regurgitated and reproduced again in all these e-mails.

Deputy Ciarán Lynch also said when his party came into government it would reopen talks with the trade unions. I sincerely hope that talks will be reopened by then. The transformation agenda is still there and I hope people will start to talk on the basis that Kieran Mulvey of the Labour Relations Commission set out. I have spoken here about it before. He was very forthright when he appeared on RTE suggesting that he could provide a forum in which people could come to talk to him and that he hoped in that way he could address some of the ills and misconceptions which had grown up over that matter.

Deputy Ciarán Lynch also said that when they entered into those talks, they would talk about the restoration of pay. I am hoping that the coming Minister for Finance, who is in the House along with his assistant Minister to be, is taking heed of that. I am quite sure he is.

I agree with Deputy Kathleen Lynch who said that whoever is not answering the telephones is doing an injustice, not so much to the Opposition, but to constituents. Ordinary constituents who want to get answers to their queries cannot do so because of some working out of this vilification of which we speak.

Returning to the motion, quite clearly the higher civil servants of whom we have spoken have taken the hit and at a quite considerable level.

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