Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House. In recognising the state of the national finances, it is an appropriate time to pay tribute to the former Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy, for the job he did. We had differences of opinion along the way but there is no doubt that great credit is due to him for his work. I admired him in his time in office and I have no doubt his successor, the Minister, Deputy Cowen, will do equally well. Between the two of them there have been two astute people in the job.

I welcome the fact that the Department of Finance has finally listened to its own propaganda after 12 years and agreed to multi-annual budgeting.

It will be more appropriate to discuss the detail of this Bill when we come back to it in January but in supporting Senator Mansergh's remarks, we should congratulate ourselves on the importance of social partnership and what it has delivered. In spite of all that the prophets of doom said about benchmarking, it has been an extraordinary success. The public service has enjoyed the best 18 months anyone can remember and there have been no stoppages at all. It is significant that the current problem in An Post is related to the fact the staff have not been paid the amount due under the last agreement. We should not forget that security of tenure for the worker and certainty for management are prizes indeed. We may have to look for this in future and we may have to pay for it but I look forward to discussions to achieve something similar in the next year.