Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This is the first Government to establish a clear pay policy which is undoing the ad hoc policies of previous Administrations over decades, Administrations which did not know or certainly did not care who was paying what to whom. That is now being rectified, but it cannot be done overnight. My Department which is new is responsible for setting the pay norms. However, there are 30,000 public servants and there is a variety of line Departments with their own Accounting Officers who are statutorily and constitutionally charged with doing this job. Unless the Deputy wants all of them to be set down and my Department to run every aspect of the public service and every agency of the State, we will have to do this in the systematic way we have set out.

The Deputy is quite wrong in his assertion that everybody is responsible and nobody is responsible at the same time. We are getting to the bottom of this issue. The lines of responsibility are clear in unveiling it. The HSE and the Department of Health are pursuing the matter actively with my full support. Of course, there is a role for the committees of this House and the Committee of Public Accounts which is doing a good job in ensuring public pay policy is implemented.

See this speech in context