Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)

I am grateful for this opportunity to talk about the public service and its staffing levels. We are all very proud of the public service and I particularly appreciate the work carried out by it in our schools, hospitals, in the justice system and even in this building where all rely on the high calibre of the staff, their skills and the services they provide to us.

The real picture is that 300,000 people are employed in our public sector, 3% of whom are leaving under this early retirement scheme and 97% of whom will remain in situ. Now that D-Day has arrived and the hysteria from the Opposition benches about the mass exodus from the services has died down, all that is happening is that those public servants who were already planning to retire this year are most likely to leave a little sooner than they had planned. The normal number of retirements this year, therefore, has been speeded up and will take place in a shorter timeframe than usual.

Nobody on this side of the House has said this process was easy. Thanks to the previous Government, nothing in this economy is easy at the moment. However, this Government is ensuring there are safeguards to front-line services. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, has committed to taking on the extra 3,000 public servants to fill the gaps in the strained resources. There is also a commitment by public servants and their managers to work together within the Croke Park agreement to change the way in which the public service does its business to ensure both its cost and the number of people working in it can fall significantly while continuing to meet the demand for services and improve the experience of service users.

I would say to Deputy Barrett that fewer people does not equal poor services. That is a poor reflection of his opinion of the people currently serving in our public service.

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