Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I wish to share time with Deputy Clare Daly.

I heard the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, say earlier that some of us on this side of the House, including those in the United Left Alliance and some other Independents, in criticising the plans to sell State assets and continue the cuts to the public service, were genuine but misguided. Let me turn that back on him, the Minister of State, Deputy Shane McEntee, and the Government generally. They are probably genuine, but they are utterly misguided in their view that there is no alternative to austerity, carving up the public sector, privatising our assets and massacring jobs in the public sector. Just as the Minister rejects our view, we reject his view that there is no alternative to austerity. We reject his view, articulated again today, that there is no possibility of taxing the wealth of the super rich in society as an alternative to attacking the livelihoods and jobs of low and middle income workers. We reject his view that there is no alternative to paying the debts of private banks and bondholders and that slashing public service jobs and privatising State assets will somehow, perversely, create jobs and improve public services. Call us simplistic, but we think the very opposite. If the Government cuts the number of public service jobs, it will end up with fewer jobs. If there are fewer staff working in the public service, there will be fewer and poorer public services. Privatisation and outsourcing will mean more job losses, higher costs for citizens and less efficiency in delivering services.

Cutting the number of public service jobs not only affects public service workers and users but also leads to job losses in the private sector. I am being simplistic, but I defy the Government or anyone else to challenge this logic. Dún Laoghaire, in my constituency, is a town that is massively struggling, like many others, with small and medium-sized businesses going out of business one after the other, such that it is beginning to look like a ghost town. Probably the biggest employer left in the town centre is St. Michael's Hospital. What would happen if the hospital which employs 400 or 500 people was to be closed? Would that be good or bad for the small and medium-sized businesses in the town? It is self-evident that it would be bad and more of them would go out of business. It is precisely those health workers who keep many of the shops and businesses in the town going. Setting the public sector against the private sector and implying that privatising and slashing jobs in the public sector will improve competitiveness and create the conditions for more jobs is fantasy in the extreme, and all the evidence shows that to be the case. Equally, the evidence of what that does to our services is manifest everywhere. For the Government to suggest there is no connection between the fact that 7,000 health workers have been lost from the health service and the planned removal of ambulance services in west Cork, the closure of the 24-hour accident and emergency department in Roscommon and the planned closure of the 24-hour accident and emergency department in Loughlinstown is bizarre. Furthermore, to suggest the taking of thousands of workers out of the education system will improve our education system and enable those in the sector to provide a better quality education to our children is fantasy in the extreme.

If we continue to cut the public service, particularly when the private sector is on strike and the banks refuse to lend money into the economy, we will continue in a downward spiral. We need to move in precisely the opposite direction. We need public sector reform but the reform is needed at the top. The Government should slash the salaries of the people at the top, and the people at the top who have failed so miserably should be removed, but it should stop attacking the people who deliver the services, who are on low and middle incomes, and whose jobs are vital to keeping this economy going.

See this speech in context