Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I share other Deputies' surprise that the person who vacated this role has not been replaced. I know how pivotal the former economic adviser was to Government policy formation in the past five years. When the 2011 Government was formed, the economy was at the heart of everything we did and we established the Economic Management Council as a core vehicle for the analysis of economic decisions. The previous economic advisers to the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste played a crucial role for our country in that period. I do not see that things have altered so remarkably for a very senior economic adviser to the Taoiseach not to be warranted, even though we have made significant economic improvement in the past five years.

Cheap publicity can always be had for comments that we should pay somebody at a lower rate, but to get people of the calibre we need, to match wits with the World Bank and the IMF, the European Commission and the ECB, we need people of calibre. I do not believe the public service should be denuded of people of calibre and I have had this debate with Sinn Féin in the past when that party was arguing against decent salaries in the health service, a hook it got off when its members realised it was not sustainable. We need to be realistic about public service pay if we want to get people of calibre. For the economic strategising that needs to inform the decision-making of the Taoiseach, the Government and this House, we need people with independent, trained economic minds to be available to us. We established the independent economic evaluation unit within the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform over the past five years and there are now more than 100 economists trained in economic analysis across the public service. Is it that the Taoiseach has not yet appointed an economic adviser or is it that he does not intend to appoint one?

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