Paschal Donohoe (Fine Gael)

I, too, want to raise the topic of the OECD report Senator White mentioned. I called for a debate on that last week because it was likely this would be a landmark report on the state of our public services.

I wish to comment briefly on the state into which we have got ourselves. How has it happened that the concept of the user of a public service being the person around whom the service is designed is suddenly a revolutionary idea? After ten years of increasing tax revenue year after year why is it suddenly dawning on this Government that the person we should be putting at the centre of our public services is the person who is using them?

It is important to have a debate on this report alone because it comments on two major policy initiatives this Government has undertaken, to which Senator White did not refer.