Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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Question 1: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform his views on the hardship that will be caused to the most vulnerable in our communities as a result of the expenditure reductions in the Comprehensive Spending Review; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35350/11]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 2: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the impact he believes the Budget 2012 expenditure cuts of €2.2 billion will have on the vulnerable, low and middle income families; and the policy measures he will put in place to minimise hardship on citizens. [35356/11]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 and 2 together.

The Government is fully alert to the sacrifices people must make and the need to lessen the impact of decisions on the vulnerable as much as possible. The unfortunate reality is that Ireland is facing a budgetary crisis, which we must correct if we are to regain the ability to restore public services in the future. Until we achieve this objective, difficult consolidation measures will be necessary. The Government is determined to bring about this fiscal correction in a fair and proportionate manner, striking a balance between spending and taxation measures. It is in the process of considering all of the options that have been developed and the detailed measures on which we decide will be announced in the first week of December.

In addition, the Government is committed to reforming our entire public service to provide better services to citizens and reduce administrative costs across the system. Today, I launched a public service reform plan, with a range of specific and time bound commitments and a far-reaching programme of rationalising State agencies and quangos. The efficiencies arising in this overall context will mitigate the impact on front line services of the regrettable expenditure reductions we must make.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the general response from the Minister. I framed the question to elicit information on the impact on the most vulnerable people in our communities of announcements related to the comprehensive review of expenditure which I had hoped the Minister would make today. Instead, he published a document on public sector reform. My main concern with his proposals is the lack of management plan for maintaining front line services, namely, those provided by nurses, firemen, ambulance drivers, emergency medic technicians, gardaí and so forth. The Minister did not announce levels below which employment in these services would not be allowed to drop. If all staff in a key area of a private sector company were leaving, the company would take measures to ensure the key service provided by the area in question was not wiped out. The document published today does not state that the number of nurses, ambulance drivers and so forth will not be allowed to fall below a certain level. Rather than having a crude cut in public sector numbers, public sector reform should be managed. I am surprised the Minister announced public sector numbers would decline by 12,000, which is more than the figure agreed by the previous Government.

I am concerned not only about social welfare rates but also the people who depend on front line services. I welcome the decision taken by the Minister for Education and Skills on examination classes as it will allow teachers to remain in employment. Similar decisions are needed in key areas such as nursing and the ambulance service. The Government should provide a commitment that the number of staff in certain sectors will not fall below a certain level. If, as is possible, 20,000 nurses were to decide to retire by next February, the country would not be able to cope. I want the Government to produce a plan to prevent a scenario in which we do not have key front line staff when the current retirement regime comes to an end.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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There is little in what Deputy Fleming said with which I do not fully agree. It is the objective, as far as is practicable, to defend front line services. We need to downsize our public services. While I believe the numbers outlined can be achieved without impacting on the delivery of services, I will not pretend that this will not be a challenge. It will mean we will have to have flexibility from staff within the confines of the Croke Park agreement. Services must be delivered better, more efficiently and in different ways. I have been engaging with public service unions in that regard virtually from the moment of my appointment and believe the objective can be met.

In terms of the specifics, the Deputy referred to education and having a strategy to deal with the numbers of employees who may exit the public service by the end of February. I have been cognisant of this matter from the beginning and I have had discussions with all my colleagues on the issue. Each Department has a strategy to deal with contingencies. For this reason, I asked that the Department be notified at least three months in advance in order that we can make preparations. I hope this will happen. We are very much in the business of managing the exit packages.

On the Deputy's point about having a floor on numbers, I will publish later today the employment control framework for each sector. We will, therefore, know what is the baseline for gardaí, Army personnel, civil servants and so forth across the public service. Perhaps the frameworks can be examined in some detail in the relevant committee.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I apologise for my late arrival.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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I will give the Deputy a moment to catch her breath.

Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I am aware of the Minister's concern about the issue I raised. He made an issue of his decision to require staff to give three months' notice to enable Departments to plan ahead. However, when I tabled a parliamentary question asking whether this notice period formed part of terms of agreement, I discovered staff are not legally obliged to give three months' notice. The Minister engaged in something of a bluff when he gave the impression that staff would be required to give three months' notice to enable him to plan ahead because we now realise there was no basis for claiming staff would do so.

The Minister for Health stated the other day that while the Health Service Executive employs 33% of public sector staff, it accounts for more than 40% of retirements. I am concerned that this trend will continue. I am expressing a concern which the Minister must be aware of, but I do not see anything from him to suggest how he will head it off. I hope the answer is not more agency nurses and paying staff to retire and come back on an agency basis the following Monday morning, as has been known to happen.

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The plan for education that the Deputy approves of is exactly that. People will be able to retire but stay in place until the exams. There may be a need for such flexibility in other sectors. I am open to that where it is needed. The objective will to ensure that we protect services as far as possible.

The Deputy fears that there might be a mass exodus from the health service. We have long spoken about the layers of administration in the HSE. I would not shed too many salty tears if many administrators left. I have more of a difficulty if many front line staff left. The idea behind asking for three months' notice is so that we can put a handle on that. The Deputy is dead right, and I said so at the time, that people are not contractually obliged to give notice. However, I have asked people to give us notice. Everybody in the public service has an interest in ensuring that the services they have spent their lives providing continue to be provided. By and large, the indications are that people will give us decent notice to make those contingency plans.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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Tá brón orm. I got caught up in the finance committee. It was all fascinating, so I am sorry about that.

I would like to ask about the impact of the expenditure cuts on lower and middle income families. I know the Minister is going to publish the comprehensive spending review. I understand that it is a very detailed document. I wonder about an impact assessment for those on fixed incomes, low incomes and so on. How will the Government measure the impact of the upcoming cutbacks on people's spending power?

I am sure I do not have to rehearse the statistics on things such as unemployment levels. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has published shocking figures showing the increase in the use of its services, not least in Dublin and Cork. We currently have 161,000 family carers providing support for elderly, the unwell, and people with disabilities. The Government has already cut the fuel allowance and the electricity and gas allowance. The housing association Respond has noted that 14.1% of the population is at risk of poverty, while one in every eight mortgages is in distress. That is a whistle-stop tour of the misery.

The Government's preoccupation with balancing the books is not without reason. We have just had a very interesting conversation at the finance committee with the new fiscal council. That debate about what works best-----

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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The council is looking for €4.4 billion in cuts.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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It has dispensed with that. The argument was about expenditure cuts or taxation measures. The evidence is not that measures on the expenditure side are most effective. The Minister might dust down that analysis. What way does he propose to protect low and middle income families? What kind of an impact assessment has his Department carried out?

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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I do not want to pretend for a minute that the adjustments the Government is required to take are anything we would want to do or anything that can be done in a painless way. There is already an extraordinary degree of pain being endured by the people of Ireland, top to bottom. We want to make the adjustments we have to make to get to the fiscal target of a 3% deficit by 2015 in the orderly way we have set out. There are those who have argued that we should do this in one big bang, regardless of the social consequences. We have negotiated with the funding troika to do this in an orderly way, not a painless way. This means that in order to get to the stage post of an 8.6% deficit next year, we need to make adjustments of €3.8 billion.

The Deputy spoke about the balance between taxation and expenditure cuts. My own party campaigned during the general election on the basis of a 50:50 ratio. Fine Gael campaigned on the basis of a 75:25 ratio. The balance in the medium-term fiscal statement will be in the order of a 60:40 ratio. It is not that people love taxes, but we are very conscious of the impact of cuts on the living standards of ordinary people and on sucking money out of the economy, in terms of allowing a growth strategy as part of our economic strategy. There cannot be just cuts and taxation. There must also be a growth and jobs element and we are trying to preserve that. These are difficult balances to strike.

We will try to do this as fairly as possible. We are worried about the impact across different sectors. An impact on education might impact on the same family or individuals in social welfare or transport. We are trying to get a cross-departmental impact assessment to see minimise the impact on the most vulnerable.