Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Cuts in staffing, embargoes on recruitment, pay cuts, cuts in services across the board, none of these equates with public service reform yet if one were to ask the wider public to say what is the Government position on public services, those are the replies one would receive. It appears that the Government has no strategy on so-called public service reform and that its actions are all directed in the areas I have described. Has the Government a strategy? What are its objectives? What is the strategy and what is the timeframe for it? Is it an agreed strategy between the component parts of the current coalition? Will the Taoiseach accept that against the backdrop of pay cuts and embargoes on recruitment and cuts in services, there is little prospect of any serious engagement with the representatives of the public service workers? Does the Taoiseach agree that he effectively scuppered a golden opportunity when he collapsed the talks with the public sector unions in advance of Christmas, when they, including the representatives of the health workers, were at the negotiating table with definite, imaginative and innovative ideas that would have resulted in reform of the public services? Where stands all of this now? Does the Taoiseach not recognise that the consequence of his effective collapsing of the talks before Christmas leaves us with a situation where there is an ever-deepening work to rule with further industrial action in the offing? Whatever potential there was for serious engagement appears, for now at least, to have been thrown out by the Taoiseach's action at the time.

Who are the public service workers? They are members of all of our families, they are not a bloc of people apart from society at large. Would the Taoiseach not agree that it is invidious of elected voices and media commentators to try to create a rift between public service workers and private sector employees? They come from the same families. We are talking about public service workers - nurses, teachers, fire-fighters and gardaí - the people who provide local government services such as water services and street maintenance. They are real people and they are hurting.

Is the Taoiseach aware that more than two thirds of public sector workers earn an income of less than €50,000 per year, with more than 40% earning less than €40,000 per year? They have taken a pay cut on top of pay cut and have demonstrated a willingness in the past to embrace reform but that is not being acknowledged. They are being continuously demonised and it is time the Government faced up to the reality of the current difficulties representing themselves in the daily work of every Member in this House.

What is the Government's strategy? What is it going to do about the current difficulties with public service workers and their legitimate calls for redress of the very serious cuts that have been imposed on them over recent budgets?

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