Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The record will show I did not suggest the time was not right for discussions at present. I am simply saying there is a need to find a realistic basis upon which an engagement can take place. The Government has been and is available at all times as an employer to discuss matters of interest to its employees' representatives and trade unions. Obviously, however, we need a realistic basis for that engagement.

As I said, the management of the dispute at present involves using well-established channels regarding the management interface with union representatives in an effort to ensure core business is not unduly affected and to avoid further escalation. The fact is the Government stands ready to engage on a realistic basis.

There are many public servants throughout the country who would recognise that there are decisions Government had to take in December which were unavoidable and necessary, and which were the discharge of our duty as a Government in order to bring forward a budget that had credibility and will enable us to proceed. I recognise, of course, that this did not lead to a negotiated settlement with the unions, despite the best efforts of everyone concerned. However, there is also the fact that, three months on, there is an agenda we need to address, including modernisation of the public services. This needs to be conducted on the basis of mutual interest because it is through dealing with those issues and providing greater efficiencies and effectiveness in the service in this way that one does not have to look to other ways of trying to trim the public service pay and pensions bill.

To look to the non-pay side of the house is obviously something we would like to do. We have no wish to go back in regard to the question of pay. That has never been our intention and if it can be avoided at any cost at all, we will of course consider other options, as we should be and are willing to do.

In regard to the Deputy's first question regarding at what stage of my career did I think the public service needed reform, this is an ongoing process. There have been reforms of the public service and many initiatives have been taken by successive Governments. None, perhaps, has reached the ambition it set itself, for a whole range of reasons, but it is an ongoing process and to suggest there has been no change in the public service and that we should only now get involved in such change is to do an injustice to the many social partnership agreements that have been signed in which, as the Deputy knows, many modernisation proposals were required as part of the pay arrangements agreed in those agreements, many of which were fulfilled.

What has come forward in the OECD report is a wider change agenda that seeks to lower, if one likes, the institutional boundaries between State agencies, bodies and Departments in a whole range of areas. This requires discussion, negotiation and agreement, and, unfortunately, it has not been possible, for a whole range of reasons, to be able to get onto that agenda as quickly as I am sure everyone would like. However, the Deputy will know much discussion has taken place around those issues which could be reactivated in the right circumstances, and we have to ascertain whether there is a way in which we can proceed along those lines. I will be anxious to do so given the right circumstances.

Regarding the question of the organisational review programmes, the Deputy referred specifically to the Department of Health and Children. The reviews are due to be published shortly. They will be brought to Government and considered and discussed there and it will be a case of what emerges from it. As is the case in respect of any reform programme, as we have seen with regard to the McCarthy report and other such reviews, the first action is to identify the priority actions in any Department and then to see what level of resources is required. It is critical for the effective delivery of services to the public to have that flexibility to redeploy staff elsewhere to pressure points in the system, whether in the Department of Social and Family Affairs or in other Departments, where the services are required. It is a case of trying to find a way in which this can happen more readily than under existing agreements and arrangements and this would certainly improve the situation considerably.

I do not wish to speculate about the structure of how Government will organise itself but public service reform is not just the business of one Ministry; it is the business of Government and a whole-Government approach is required. It is a case of finding a framework in which change and reform and can be considered and this would be the best means for achieving a successful outcome to this agenda.

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