Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It is a great luxury not to have to worry about budgets while being able to set out rhetorically that the Deputy would defend public services by providing for more public servants, more money and more services while, in the meantime, the taxpayer has to borrow €400 million per week to keep present levels of service going. We do not have the same room to manoeuvre so we have to work within the budgets available to us and try to get better value for money, effectiveness and efficiency.

There is an agenda for transforming public services that was set out not only in the OECD report and the task force that worked from it but also in the work that was done sectorally in discussions directly with the social partners. They have an intrinsic merit and should be addressed and dealt with on that basis. It is in everyone's interest in terms of maintaining jobs in the public service that we would have those flexibilities and have that transformation take place. We must negotiate that and find means by which we can all address it but, in fairness to the social partners, including employee representatives, there is a recognition that all of that work can be done.

On the question of being able to provide a solution to the present industrial relations problem, I note what the President of ICTU had to say, that it is both desirable and possible to achieve it. We must see if there is a realistic basis on which to engage.

Yes, there have been pay cuts and they have rightly been progressive with respect to the highest pay cuts being made to those on the highest incomes. Any sense of fairness would dictate that. There are also people in the exposed private sector who have lost wages, many of whom unfortunately have lost their jobs. The security of employment in the public service is a premium that must be recognised by us all and those who are involved in the public service rightfully acknowledge that is something in the present circumstances that is of value and worthwhile. There are many in the private sector who, unfortunately, because of market conditions have not been in a position to maintain employment levels in comparison to what they were before and others who are currently unemployed.

Although there have been political efforts to suggest the contrary, at no stage have I denigrated public servants. On the contrary, I recognise that in health, education, the Defence Forces, the Garda, the Revenue Commissioners and the Civil Service, and a range of other areas, there are civil and public servants who are seeking to make a contribution to the economic renewal of the country and for the country to come through the present difficulties. I have never suggested otherwise.

The responsibility of Government is to discharge its duties based on the budgetary realities and the fact that we have a configuration in our spending as it is means that every public expenditure programme must make a contribution. Yes, there was a Government decision on cuts to wages on the basis that we felt to ask the non-pay side of expenditure programmes to take the necessary hit would have greatly affected the provision of services to those who most require them. We can all have a political debate about whether these are right and correct decisions and people can make up their own minds but the realities do not change. If there were not to be control of the public and pensions pay bill, we would have had to have hit the services side. That is something the Government was not prepared to contemplate in present circumstances and, therefore, that balance had to be provided.

My answer to the Deputy is that there is a strategy in place. We must find a realistic basis for engaging on this issue. We are not starting from a blank page, a lot of work has been done. It has an intrinsic merit anyway. It must be proceeded with and I do not believe industrial relations disputes will achieve the objectives set out. They will weaken rather than strengthen our ability to provide public services in the future given the precarious budgetary situation we have. All of us must look to the wider issues and common good. We are all members of the community and must all work within the budgets so we can build for the country again and ensure we can remunerate public servants in the future on a sustainable basis based on growth returning to the economy and getting through the present financial crisis.

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