Brendan Ryan (Labour)

If well-off people like myself were the issue, Fine Gael would propose that we pay 50% tax on large parts of our income. However, if they did so a large number of Fine Gael supporters would drop dead with fright. People on incomes such as mine are not paying half enough income tax. I did not support the cuts in the top rate of income tax. They achieved nothing. They did not make me or anyone else work any harder. The problem has always been that people on low incomes were in the wrong tax band, not that the top rate of income tax was too high. People on high incomes can afford to pay higher taxes. That is not the issue.

The issue is the distortion of the public perception of what is the public service. I do not dispute Senator Finucane's truthfulness. The mythological civil servant sits in a mythological Department doing nothing. There may be a few of them about, but anyone who is familiar with large private sector organisations will also know that the problem of individuals in back-offices of large private organisations is also a reality. It is easy to keep a check on everyone in a small firm where there are only six people. In a big organisation where 95% of the people are doing their job properly, the problem is how to deal with the other 5%.

In journals of the engineering profession, of which I am a member, I read about the problem of under-performance in, for example, large US chemical engineering consultancies. The worst possible thing to do is to sack those who are under-performing. Regarding the mythological public servant of whom he spoke, if Senator Finucane thinks the solution is to sack the people in the Department he thinks are not doing their job, he is inviting serious industrial relations problems. It is a management issue to manage such people. The fundamental problem in parts of the public service is the unwillingness of people in management to do what they are entitled to do and take responsibility where there is a problem. The myth is that these are all civil servants. They are actually nurses, doctors, teachers and their ilk.

In the sector in which I work, where I am told we are not sufficiently flexible, I am required to teach at any hour of the day between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. I am required to work at night if my managers decide I should. I am paid time-and-a-half for working at night. How much more flexibility does anyone want from people like that?

I was not a Member of this House between 1993 and 1997. I was involved in a research project at the time. The third level colleges throughout Europe that were involved in the project communicated by electronic mail. We were researching with private sector organisations, none of which had got around to even thinking about electronic communication. We had to drive technological change in the private sector and lead the question of new technology. The Internet and the world wide web were invented in the public sector and were used in the public sector before the private sector even noticed.