Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response.

I assume that this new scheme is designed to reduce numbers in the public sector by 10,000 by 2014. That was the Minister's stated target. I am working on the assumption that this is the mechanism that he has identified for doing that, but he might confirm that for me when he responds.

The difficulty that my party has here is a fundamental one and it relates to the moratorium on recruitment and the embargo. The Minister states that he will ask line Ministers to identify surpluses of staff. I very much hope that when he has all of this detailed information he will publish all of it and the publishing will not be selective.

I would certainly like to know where are these areas of alleged staffing surpluses. We can very readily identify the places where there are staffing shortfalls but it would be interesting to see where, in the view of Government, there are surpluses.

I do not know how the Government can take a further 10,000 workers out of the system and still guarantee the protection of services. The Minister said service delivery has increased and improved but that is not the experience of the end-user of the services. That is the reality and any Member of the House who does any level of constituency work will vouch for that. Indeed, anybody who has taken the time to talk to people who are working in the public service will also know that.

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