Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

First and foremost, this Bill is about the partial restoration of pay. It is not about pay increases. While the Social Democrats would honour the Lansdowne Road agreement, we believe its inclusion in the budgetary arithmetic is a failure of negotiation on the part of the Government. We believe that as the agreement involves the restoration of existing public sector commitments, it constitutes existing public sector expenditure obligations and as such falls outside the parameters of the fiscal compact, including both the expenditure benchmark and the structural deficit adjustment. If we are looking at this as a partial adjustment, further pay restoration will depend on the buoyancy of future budgets.

Had the other approach been taken, there would have been a greater degree of certainty around pay restoration under what is a legal agreement. That comes down to the way it was negotiated.

When the crash happened and in order to deflect blame, workers were pitched against one another - public sector versus private sector - which was very destructive. In any future scenario, we must analyse in a wider sense what we mean by reform. There was a legitimate expectation that the reforms promised would include institutional reforms so that people would see that public service provision was being done differently, was more citizen centred and was delivering the best possible services in the context of the limited money that was available. In fact, the word reform just became a code word for cuts. We need to start taking stock now, look to the future and ask what kind of public services we want. I acknowledge that there were some parts of the budget that went a small way towards improving matters.

In the context of class sizes, one sees excellent people who are totally demoralised. Teachers are standing in front of classes of up to 35 children in some cases, many of which are in my local area. Teachers say that their work is more like crowd control than teaching. The situation is worse in some parts of the country because of the historical model used for calculating the teacher needs of a school. Children have to arrive in a school before the Department will determine that the need is growing, even if it is in an area that has a pattern of growth not just over recent years, but over recent decades. There was an expectation that this would change and that there would be equality in terms of how the pain was felt, for example. People expected that there would not be disproportionate numbers of children awaiting speech and language therapy in certain parts of the country. In some parts, there are long waiting lists while in others, the lists are relatively short.

I have been highly critical of the way gardaí are deployed and have called for reform in this area. A policing plan is produced every year and is supposed to take account of demographic shifts and shifts in crime rates. We have just recently seen an initiative where Garda resources were moved to a part of the country where there is a serious problem. However, if one looks at the ratio of gardaí to the general population in County Louth and the robbery and burglary rates in that county, it is clear that it should not have taken the recent awful event, the murder of Garda Golden, for Garda resources to be increased in Louth. If one looks at the statistics for fuel laundering, robberies, theft and so forth, the numbers for County Louth jump off the page. It is one of the areas where, had there been a normal institutional response to the policing plan in terms of crime rates and demographic shifts, sufficient cover would have been provided before the situation became so acute. I am very familiar with the issue of Garda numbers because the lowest ratio of gardaí to population is in County Kildare, by quite a distance. Furthermore, there is a growing burglary rate in the same county, which should not come as a surprise. The burglary rate in Kildare is one of the highest in the country.

When the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, talks about reform of the public service, he may well have a different vision to that of the public. When the public hears about reform of public services, they tend to look at it from the point of view of better outcomes. Real reform delivers better outcomes. I met a man in my office recently who applied for his pension 12 months ago. However, because he worked in different parts of the country during his 40 year long working life, some records are in Waterford, others are in Donegal and so forth. He is being sent from Billy to Jack while trying to get something to which he is entitled. He has been asked to provide information himself and to catalogue where he worked at different points in time even though he worked in the PAYE sector throughout his working life. That is not the fault of public servants but of the dysfunctional way in which the data is held, which results in a very poor outcome for those seeking a service.

We must develop a vision of the kind of public services we want, services that will put the citizen at the centre. We would make the argument that we must look to really good practice in countries like Denmark and Sweden, where a different value is placed on public services. If one does it right, one actually puts money back into peoples' pockets. For example, if we were to provide really free primary education, parents would not be asked for voluntary contributions or would not have to pay for transport if they do not live near a school. We would be factoring those costs in, which Barnardos estimate would run to €103 million. Imagine a scenario where, in June and July, parents would not be worrying about how they would get their children back to school in September. This would particularly favour people on low to middle incomes and would be as valuable to them as a few extra coins in their pockets. In fact, it would be more valuable because it would give a greater degree of certainty around family budgets.

I welcome the fact that there will be a partial restoration of pay but it is very precarious because it has not been factored into the budgetary arithmetic. The Landsdowne Road agreement is a legal agreement. I would like the Minister to explain why it was not factored in and why he has taken this particular approach. Further pay restoration can only happen if there is buoyancy in the public finances but none of us can say that there will not be another recession in one or two years' time. I hope not but the signs are not too good, in terms of the figures that have been floating around in recent weeks regarding fairly significant economies. A degree of certainty around pay restoration can only happen if it is included within the budgetary arithmetic. At the moment, there is no certainty.

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