Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

As the Ceann Comhairle rightly said, the Deputy is straying back to the debate we had on the substance of the Bill. However, I grapple every day with people who have contractual rights that I am trying to undo and they are making it perfectly clear to me that they will go to the High Court. The advice I am getting is that I cannot undo them.

We are only nine or ten months in office and we have fundamentally altered the pay rates for everybody in the public service. No civil servant earns more than €200,000, which is the rate we established for the Taoiseach on the day we came into office. That is a great deal of money but every other salary is below that now. The pay rate for a Secretary General was €285,000 and €85,000 is a big drop in income. New pay rates have been set for the future.

With regard to the commercial semi-States, by and large, the pay ceiling should be €250,000 per annum. We looked at modifying the Hey rate by applying all the deductions in the FEMPI legislation and implementing a further 10% reduction, which we are applying to all new appointments, to get a new Hey rate. The only person earning an amount in excess of €250,000 annually is the chief executive officer of the ESB and that salary is less than half what it was 12 months ago, which means a greater than 50% reduction. We are putting extraordinary changes to top level pay in place. These are fluid positions and we are making new appointments and so on.

The concern I have is whether we will get people of the calibre we need to apply for some of the positions in future. The more I read in the newspapers about this, there seems to be a growing view that we want a dumbed down Civil Service and public service; we can buy in expertise from the private sector and pay those individuals private sector rates; we should squeeze downwards all salaries in the public service; and, we do not want a public service of expertise. That runs counter to all the analysis done by Nyberg and others regarding the fundamental failures of oversight in this economy and in this State over the past number of years but that is a debate for another day.

Deputy McDonald readily ascribes glibly based motives to me. She said I am doing this because I am somehow attuned to a public view that something must be done and I have done the minimum, as if I could go further. I tell the truth to this House. My advice is that if I was to accept her amendment, it would be put at risk the fundamental architecture of FEMPI.

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