Mary White (Fianna Fail)

When I was a member of a Fianna Fáil think tank, I suggested that Senator O'Rourke's former Department should be called the Department of Public Enterprise to emphasise that, like businesses, the State must be enterprising in its approach.

I disagree with Senator McDowell's suggestion that the best people leave the public service. Many are not in a position to leave because of mortgage or family responsibilities. I was able to take a career break under a scheme introduced by the then coalition Government in 1986. From there I was able to pursue risk in the knowledge that I could have returned to the public service.

Being an entrepreneur, I believe it is critical that vision and enterprise be part of the public service and the Civil Service. In this regard, it cannot be repeated too often that many public servants are visionary and entrepreneurial. They are not bureaucratic.

I tire of talk about the Germany. I visited that country when the Berlin Wall came down and revisited it six years later. During that period, the infrastructure of East Germany had been transformed. The German Government should be applauded for having the guts to proceed with it. Germany continues to carry the burden of rebuilding the former East Germany. Similarly, in the early 1980s there was incessant criticism of the proposal to build the DART network from Bray to Howth. It took guts to build it, but today there would be chaos in its absence. We must take risks for the future and leave an infrastructure for the next generation. When I moved to Newbridge from Dundalk in 1955, there was talk of bypassing Newbridge, but nobody had the nerve to proceed. It took almost 40 years to do so.

Technology is undergoing incessant change. Likewise, people in business must change constantly or they will lose out. There is a need to keep pace with infrastructure developments. The problems we face today are the result of hesitation over previous projects. It is the reason there is so much congestion.

Having been a public servant, I find that those who are most critical of the public service never worked in it. People should stop criticising the public service.