Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

I move this motion because I believe sincerely that politics is on trial in this country at the moment. These are not ordinary times by any stretch of the imagination. In the past 18 months, 250,000 jobs have been lost. Well over 25% of everything we spend is borrowed money. Many young families bought houses at the peak of the market and they are now struggling just to survive. We are seeing people's worlds being turned upside down. People look on and they ask what role politics can play in dealing with this problem. Sadly, many of them have lost faith in the idea that politics can become part of the solution to problems of this scale. Instead, they see a self-absorbed system that does not seem to be in touch with the problems facing ordinary people. That is a dangerous development for our political system. If people do not see leadership coming from the political arena, it is very difficult to have the sort of transformational change this country needs.

Many of our problems today have come as a result of a catastrophic fall in national income. There are different ways in which we can deal with such a catastrophic fall. One way is for people who are strong enough and privileged enough to circle the wagons and defend their rights and privileges. The loss of 25% of our income will be taken from those who are weak and vulnerable, such as those who have lost their jobs, young people coming out of college, people sinking into negative equity and debt repossession, old and sick people who hope to get services in hospitals but find they do not exist. That is quite a credible line. Many people will look at what has happened in this country and the first instinct will be to defend their privilege and their ground. However, if the strong do that, the weak in our community lose out.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Politicians are among the strong in our community. We make the rules. We make the rules about pensions for former Ministers and we make the rules about pay levels. There are few groups as privileged as politicians in being able to defend our turf from being undermined in this time of crisis. This debate is about whether politics will respond by leading by example, or whether it will defend and shelter those who are not willing to let go of their privileges. That is what we have seen from the Government to date and it confirms the worst features of politics in the view of many, namely, that we are out of touch.

The subject matter of this motion is germane to ordinary people. They see a pension being paid to somebody who is still at work largely in the same job. They see a pension paid to someone regardless of age. They see it paid along with a salary that is among the highest in the public service. That is why people react with fury, as we have seen in recent times.

Members of the Opposition have said that this system is long past its sell-by date. When a Bill on this subject was debated 18 months ago, Fine Gael advocated that all pensions to serving politicians would be brought to an end, yet the Government did not seize the nettle at that stage. It has allowed this problem to fester and develop into great damage to politics. Instead of debating how we can confront the enormous problems in our country, people hear about politicians holding out to defend privileges that have no bearing to people's ordinary lives and the struggles they face.

This is a really testing time for many families, so politicians must square up to the challenge and show that not only do we understand the problems and have ideas as to how they will be resolved, but that we are willing to lead by example. That is what people expect and they have a right to expect it. Politicians are given an enormous privilege by people to come to this House and to try to provide a framework within which all our people can prosper. We look back over the past few years and the catastrophic policy mistakes that have been made. People in the Government will seek to diminish their role in these mistakes and say it came from overseas, or that it was the fault of the Financial Regulator or somebody else. Let us be honest. People do not see robust accountability anywhere within the political and public service system. They do not see politicians, nor any other people in privileged positions, be they regulators or otherwise, take responsibility for doing their job. People are furious because they do not see accountability and they do not see a system that is responding to the crisis they are facing. We make it all the more difficult to build public confidence if some politicians hold out against this.

The Government is currently trying to persuade public servants to enter into a pay agreement. There is much to recommend in that agreement, but let us not fool around. The Government has undermined the case for signing up because it has been perceived to be unfair in the way it has applied the rules to date. Those rules were not administered in a fair way. The lowest paid were asked to pay a disproportionate amount. Senior public servants - 655 of them - were given a free pass, pretending that a bonus which they ought to have earned through exceptional achievement should be their automatic right. This is bogus. Judges were exempted from making the contribution that was asked of others. People want to see fair play and the reason there is difficulty in selling this agreement is that they do not see fair play, nor do they see a strategy for economic recovery. This motion highlights another example where unfairness is supported and protected by the Government.

I have seen and heard the political and legal arguments that have been trotted out, but they are threadbare. We have been told that a pension cannot be removed because this is a constitutional right of private property. That is a bogus argument, because we have already decided to cut them by 25% and we have decided to abolish them after the next election. A person who has ten years to serve in the Dáil after the next election effectively loses 85% of the pension, but if that were a fundamental property right, that 85% could not be removed.

The property right is a bogus argument. We have always known that property rights are circumscribed by the common good. One has a right to property and the free enjoyment of property only in accordance with the common good. Governments have a legitimate right to circumscribe that property right in the interests of the common good, once it is applied fairly. The argument of constitutional protection for pensions is threadbare. We also hear the argument concerning legitimate expectation - that in some way people entered the Dáil with the legitimate expectation that they would have these pensions. If that is the case, they will be gone after the next election anyhow. There is no legitimate expectation because these pensions are not part of an employment contract; they were created by a statute. The Oireachtas itself created this right and can remove it. That principle is well established. This is not like a contract of employment. These conditions are designed by the Oireachtas which can decide to change them in the interests of the public good.

Nowhere is there a fairer process than in the Oireachtas for Deputy McDaid and others who are affected, because not only do they have a right to be heard but they can also vote on the issue if they wish.

The argument that the Oireachtas cannot provide for the termination of these pensions is bogus. It is the right and duty of the Oireachtas to make decisions that are in the common good. The common good now demands that politicians should be willing to bear a reasonable burden. It is not unreasonable to end a system whereby people who are still working have pensions. It is particularly reasonable when those politicians are the very ones who are looked to to show example. There is an overwhelming argument for the Oireachtas to handle itself properly and sweep away this anomaly, which is an irritant and is undermining our credibility as being able to provide leadership.

I have heard Deputy McDaid talk about witch-hunts, as if this is a great conspiracy to hound down some individuals. It just shows the extent to which some people in politics have become divorced from reality. Ordinary young people coming out of colleges had a legitimate expectation - to use the words the Government used to defend pensions - to live, to work, to earn their livelihoods and to raise their families in this country. However, 80% of the 250,000 jobs that have been lost in the past 18 months were held by young people under the age of 30. A whole generation has been disenfranchised by the economic crisis we are enduring. How can someone who is earning close to €100,000 at the top of the tree in the public service claim that asking them to give up a pension is a witch-hunt when others see their prospects being wiped away? There must be proportionality, yet the Government seems to think this is discriminatory. I do not think the notion that, if the Oireachtas removes pensions from those who have served in ministerial office is in some way discriminatory, stands up to scrutiny. Of course, others who have retired from senior positions have pension rights, but they are not allowed to continue to work in the same jobs they had all their lives. That is happening in politics, however. People are continuing to work in politics and are seeking to draw a pension from a period in their lives when they were Ministers.

Senator Joe O'Toole offered the defence that when this system was set up one had to keep people of experience in politics. It was said that these were people who deserved to give of their ministerial and other experience to the House. That may have been a justifiable cause back in the day when that measure was introduced. At that time, by and large, people were amateurs and politics was a low-paid endeavour. They all had other professions and came into ministerial office suspending their other work. There was perhaps a case to say, "Let's keep them active in politics, rather than see them go back to those professions". That is not the case now. We are full-time politicians and are paid as much as a principal officer in the public service, which is a very senior post. We are not part-time amateurs who spend our time in the Law Library or in the offices of solicitors or accountants and come here on the odd occasion to provide advice on legislation. We are full-timers and should recognise that the world has changed. We are being paid on a full-time basis and we cannot defend old privileges.

This country is in great peril at present. To some degree, there is a battle going on between the past and the future. Many people's analysis of our problems stems from the extent to which they have been steeped in the past and the big mistakes that were made. They are the sort of people who come up with phrases such as "This is a property right", "This is a legitimate expectation" or "This is disproportionate and discriminatory". They have lost sight of what is happening out there in the real world where things are extremely severe. Part of the reason it is so tough is because of the abject failure by this country's leadership in the political, banking, regulatory and public service areas. They have failed us. We cannot look to the logic of that failed system to come up with reasons we should retain privileges like pensions for former Ministers. That basis is not good enough. People look to politics to lead us into the future, not to find the defences of the past.

My criticism of the Government is that it is steeped in the mistakes of the past. Its view of banking is "Let's try and protect the flawed, bad lending of the past", instead of saying "Let's create a banking system that can lend for the future". The thinking is, "Let's pull up the rope ladder behind us and protect those who are inside, let's not reform the bureaucracy, and let's stop recruiting new people to the public service". That is the sort of thinking that turns our backs on young people who are the future of this economy. People graduating from colleges have a right to expect an opportunity to work, even in the public service. If they are enterprising enough, they have a right to expect banks to give them credit.

We must decide to be on the side of the future, rather than opting for easy solutions that come from those whose analysis is steeped in the mistakes of the past. All the analysis the Government has offered to justify why it will not introduce legislation to abolish these pensions once and for all is steeped in the sort of thinking we must abandon if we are to serve those who are in great peril. We must correct our public finances and ask people in the public service to accept a complete change in their work practices. That will happen. We will have to tell such people that the work practices in the public service with which they have been familiar have changed. We are going to see radical reform, including shared services, bodies closing down and a rationalisation of agencies. When the public look in here, however, they hear people say, "The one thing we can't change are the pensions paid to former Ministers". There is a huge gap between the sort of transformational reform this country needs to create a future and the sort of thinking that is underpinning the Government's defence of an indefensible system.

At the end of this debate, I hope the House - including Deputy McDaid - will decide to abandon this system. The leadership should say to ordinary people, "Yes, we are in a crisis. We expect you to do extraordinary things for a better purpose in the long-term. However, we are also willing to abandon privileges that we have had as part of a collective effort to address extraordinarily difficult times."

See this speech in context