Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I sympathise with Deputy Murphy and the Acting Chairman on the outrageous events in their county in recent days. Deputy Murphy is right in her comments about Garda numbers, and criminals are not stupid and will move to places that are poorly policed. That is not the fault of local gardaí but rather a result of decisions made at the top. That is disgraceful.

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, but it is a pity the Minister, Deputy Howlin, has left as I have commended him for many of the jobs he has tried to do in reforming the public sector. The task he has been given is not easy. It is made twice as difficult by the promises made before the last election. Letters went out from SIPTU to every community employment scheme in the country urging its members to support Labour, but they have been under siege and decimated ever since. I will not get into that today.

I pay tribute to the many hundreds of thousands of decent public service workers throughout the country who have worked so hard over the years. I was at retirement events for two officials in Teagasc last Friday night and I have been invited to a similar event for an ambulance driver, Mr. Michael Wall, who is retiring after 44 years of service. People like him have provided great service and did their job with hard work and dedication. When 4,200 people are taken from the HSE, 1,030 people are taken from the Civil Service, 931 people are taken from local authorities and 315 people are taken from the Garda, how can we continue, especially when people are not being replaced?

A certain large number of appointments have taken place under the radar in recent years, both before the current Government was in office and since. Privileged positions, such as ushers to esteemed justices, have been filled while basic front-line services have been removed. That is an outrage and insulting. It should not be done because we will be left with many chiefs and no Indians. The unions must be involved with this as their representatives sat around the table in the good times and shared the spoils. They have completely abandoned front-line workers at the coalface, such as the man on the road, the lower paid public servants in offices, clerks and administration personnel. We saw what happened with the HSE fund that was to train people but was abused by union leaders.

The Construction Industry Federation, CIF, was also a cosy partner at the table when the negotiations took place in the good times. There are investigations into the actions involving unions, with €30 million or up to €100 million gone missing. Ordinary front-line employees in the trenches, working drills and jackhammers and laying blocks, paid the fees every week to the federation but they are getting nothing now. The money is gone like snow from a ditch. Hard questions must be asked about where it has gone and the scandals that went on at every level throughout the country. This happened even when times were not good but when the economy improved, these problems were compounded.

Senior public servants are apparently paid seven times more than the administration personnel or the man on the road providing front-line services or called on in an emergency. These include gardaí or paramedics who must attend awful tragedies, such as the house in Kildare the other night. They also attend to accidents, such as the tragedy in County Louth, to pick up the pieces and inform families. It is awful. I am told that 85% of the staff in the HSE are front-line staff, with the rest as managers. If that is the case, much of the money is going on managers. Their careers are important to them and they are not interested in front-line staff or patients. In many cases they want to build their own careers and nest eggs. In St. Luke's Hospital in Clonmel, which is in my constituency, the offices are fit for a king or queen, with paintings on the wall. It seems they think: "To hell with front-line services, the public and everything else." I call these people self-serving. It is outrageous and it should not have been allowed happen.

We must have the highest standards in public service and we have had the highest standards over the years. I wish well the public officials who have retired. We have a new Secretary General at the Department of Finance. I will not mention his name but everyone knows who he is. There are serious question marks over his appointment. I am all for bringing in people from outside the public service to mix it up and bring in outside expertise. However, we must have impeccable standards and such people must have unblemished records. This man should stand aside for the present until such time as he comes before the Committee of Public Accounts or an Oireachtas committee with responsibility for finance to answer questions on the five-year sabbatical which shows as a gap in his CV after he left Zurich Capital Markets in the United States. Major problems occurred and it was being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company in question was severely fined. I am not saying he is guilty of anything-----

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