Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I refer to Eddie Hobbs. He claimed he is past his sell-by date. He stated that: "[T]he public sector seems to be overpaid and inefficient and that needs to be faced down like Thatcher faced down the coal miners." An editorial in Business and Finance, apart from seeking a reduction in the top rate to 36%, states:

[The Government] should be freezing all public sector hiring and wages until after a comprehensive value for money review of all public sector functions ... Anything short of this will be a shamefully apparent bet on the Opposition's incompetence.

I do not criticise the Opposition for not demanding such measures. A columnist for the Sunday Independent stated that reform inevitably requires confrontation and that the Government does not do confrontation, rather it placates and seeks consensus. A former editor of the Irish Farmers' Journal wrote in a similar vein. All they have in common is that they are anti-trade union and anti-social partnership and believe that, somehow, we could not and should not be enjoying our present prosperity without some sort of Thatcherite Nirvana.

One of the great merits of the Government and its predecessors in the past 20 years is that we have found an alternative approach. Even for the better-off in society, the approach adopted by the Government is far better than any type of Thatcherite confrontation.