Dáil debates

Wednesday, 25 September 2013

Public Service Management (Recruitment and Appointments) (Amendment) Bill 2013: Second Stage (Resumed)

 

4:00 pm

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is part of the Bill, because it has reform emblazoned all over it. Yet when push comes to shove, they will not attend the Chamber. They are doing the Oireachtas a huge disservice with the charade that goes on here every day about so-called opposition.

While this Bill is small and relatively technical, it has an impact on people's lives and that might be lost in some of the discourse. When we talk about public servants, about trying to achieve more with less, about money and redeployment, people are always at the back of that. As a public servant myself before I came in here, we need to be very conscious and very careful in the use of language during debate on public services and the restructuring that needs to take place. It is not a case of the private sector versus the public sector when we try to heal the economic woes in the country. Everybody needs to shoulder the burden evenly and proportionately.

Embracing new technologies and an improved transport system has led to a situation where by 2015 we will have 37,500 fewer public servants than what we had when Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats were at their height, recruiting everybody and anybody into the public services. That recruitment into the public service under the last Government not only added hugely to the Exchequer costs of maintaining public services but it also ran down the value, reputation and the good work of the public service. We had agencies, talking shops and quangos for everything and anything under the sun when Bertie Ahern was running the country. We were then left with the situation where the current Government has to untangle, unravel and remove quangos from the country. If I had a criticism of the current Administration, it is that the "dequangoisation" of Ireland is not happening fast enough for many people-----

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.