Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

We would need an economic policy debate virtually every week if we were to take account of new statistics and European and international benchmarking, one piece of which was just been mentioned by Senator Ulick Burke. Myth number one, which is more in the media than in the political system, is that the only reason we have full employment is that we have been stuffing the public service. The latest statistics show that the number of staff in the Civil Service has increased by only 700 since June 2002. Some people may believe we need more planners or corporate enforcers. Even the 30,000 increase in the number of gardaí, health workers, teachers and local authority staff is only 38% of the increase in last year's employment, or approximately one in 12 of the new jobs created since 2002.