Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have outlined the rationale for this. I have always made very clear my appreciation for the huge contribution the public service has made to our country at a time of great difficulty but amidst the anger the Deputy has articulated let us also acknowledge two other points about what is happening in our public services, first, over the past two years we have over 18,000 more public servants, the majority of them performing the frontline roles that the Deputy regularly calls for. We have more special needs assistants, SNAs, than we have had before. We are hiring new people to teach, which we were not able to do some years ago. The improvement in our public finances has given the State the ability to do that. Any future change will happen because of a change in our economic circumstances that the Deputy said was never going to happen. He said in this House that we would not see our economy get to a point where its prospects would improve and now with the very improved prospects that he said would not happen he is not acknowledging the change they are making in terms of our ability to hire more people, put more money into our health services and to pay for agreements such as the Lansdowne Road agreement-----

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