Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Dublin 4 perhaps but not Dublin 6. The Croke Park agreement was quite effective, when management worked it well, in bringing about necessary reform in the public service. I believe in protecting low-paid workers and paying people correctly. As I stated earlier, the differential between high and low paid is too wide, not only in Irish society but across the Western world. There are finite resources and over-rewarding the top end is unfair, whether that is with public servants, people in the private sector, star sports people etc. Ultimately, the ordinary punter will be paying the very high salary.

I also believe in good practice. My experience of public servants is that they have been very open to new technology and good work practices, although a small coterie of people in the public service over the years have objected to every change in practice, even if it would lighten the work burden. This has been damaging to the interests of public servants as some of this small coterie have been quite powerful in public service unions. The idea of the Croke Park agreement was to eliminate such issues. Many people would say that getting answers and decisions from the system has become a painful operation. When we consider the system, an inability to get simple answers to simple questions fast in certain sections is unjustifiable. It is the job of management to work with employees and most ordinary public servants would much prefer to work in an atmosphere where a job is getting done and they are not getting grief from the public. This needs a radical change in work practices.

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