Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)

I am still reeling from Deputy Ryan's contribution when he attempted to dress up what is an attack on the public sector as being something in its favour. We have heard many contributions throughout this debate on the negative impact that job losses will have on the delivery of services. Contrary to what Deputy Ryan said, it is not reckless hysteria to say that, rather it is a matter of fact and a matter of record. To take the area of health alone, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation said that last year was the worst year for patients being on trolleys since that organisation was set up. More than 86,000 patients were on trolleys last year, representing an increase of 14% on the previous period. How can removing more staff out of that system possibly alleviate that situation? It cannot. To overcome the short-term gap, more agency staff will have to be employed, which will be hugely expensive, the hours of the existing staff will have to be increased and they will be forced to postpone leave and so on.

The Tánaiste told Members this morning that people need have no fear, that the closure of Garda stations will not have an impact and that it will result in more community gardaí being out on the street improving everybody's safety. That is complete and utter rot. The reality is that public services are being slashed. The same gardaí the Tánaiste would have us believe will be on the beat are being instructed to conserve petrol, not to go out in their cars and to cut back on their mileage because An Garda Síochána owes millions to Topaz in unpaid petrol bills. This is developing into a banana republic when it is not possible even to have petrol for Garda cars and the Tánaiste thinks that is okay. All of us know the appalling nightmare it is for citizens waiting to avail of social welfare allowances who cannot access them because there is no staff to process the claims. It is rich of my constituency colleague, Deputy Ryan, to talk about services being protected by productivity when he knows that in his own area of Fingal County Council, services are nearly grinding to a halt as a result of the exit of staff from those areas.

I want to deal briefly with the issue of how we got here. The jobs that are being axed are not just any jobs but relatively decent, secure, permanent and pensionable jobs, and they provide valuable roles not only for the individuals in those jobs but also for society. Normally, if jobs were being axed, the unions would be beating down the door demanding justice, but they are not doing that because they are part of the problem. They, too, perpetuated a myth under the false claim that they would protect jobs and workers' conditions which they have not done because the staff remaining in the public service are the ones who are bearing the cost of all of this. Ten of thousands of decent jobs have been lost in our economy. That is not the fault of people who took redundancy. The Government orchestrated a scheme where people had no choice but to leave. I have met many people who did not want to leave but it would have been economic madness for them to remain as they would not have been able to avail of their entitlements if they did not exit now. It was a gun-to-the-head situation where they would have been at a financial loss and would have been working essentially for nothing if they had continued on in their jobs. The Government orchestrated that situation with the connivance of the unions and the result is that the remaining workers, all the people who benefit from public services and the economy, are bearing the price of that. We are losing valuable quality jobs against the backdrop of the tragedy of people queuing on the streets of Cork and Dublin to leave this country to get employment elsewhere. It is a myth to say that people in the public service were sitting around doing nothing and that there are many jobs that could be saved by working harder and working smarter. That is not the case. What we have is a con to put up a headline figure to pacify the troika and finance the bailouts. The reality of what the Government is guilty of is not protecting the public service, as Deputy Ryan tried to say, but butchering it and economic short termism which will have a devastating effect on all our citizens and ultimately on the economy.

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