Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We have had various requests over some time for a debate on competitiveness, as well as comments about public servants and public service benchmarking. We ought to have that debate, because virtually all the media people who criticise benchmarking are paid a hell of a lot better than 95% of the public servants they criticise. They have managed to benchmark themselves during the great boom years, with levels of salary that most public servants, or indeed Members of the Oireachtas, could never aspire to. People in glasshouses have been given the same advice for generations and they should be very wary of pointing fingers at others.