Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

The Deputy obviously believes there is political capital in touting out the notion of I somehow defend top level pay when the truth by any objective criterion, it that nobody has reduced top level pay more than I have in one year. No Minister with responsibility for the public service has ever reduced top level pay across the public service more than I have. The Deputy knows she is talking poppycock in relation to that.

Unlike the Deputy opposite, I am a passionate supporter of the public service. The Deputy wants public service pay rates to be reduced to some low average so that we do not actually attract the expertise we need. That flies in the face of all the expert analysis of failure that has occurred. If the Deputy reads any of the objective analysis of the Department of Finance by Nyberg or anybody else, she will see that they state that there was a critical lack of experts and expertise. People say we need more economists, lawyers and legal experts within the public service but she would have all of those driven out of the public service to allow us, I suppose, buy them in from the private sector because that is the only way we could do it, and thereby dumb down the public service. I will not do that. That is not the view of this Government, but we will moderate all salaries, and we have taken a significant step towards starting that in a way that has not happened ever before. There is no thinking about that. That is a fact. We have reduced the top level of pay, maintained public services and not had strikes in a way that has not been done previously. There is more work to be done in this area, as I indicated in my reply to Deputy Donnelly, but Deputy McDonald might be slightly gracious occasionally in acknowledging the work done to date in this regard.

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