Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. I have listened to a lot of the discussion here about what should and should not be done in the budget. The most important point is that there be an element of fairness. The people understand there will be hardship and are ready to take a stand for it. However, they have to be convinced that what is being done is fair.

I heard my colleague, Senator Quinn, for whom I have great respect, say recently in the House that people might ask in the future, "What did you do in the time of great economic crisis?" and that the only answer would be, "I went out on strike for a day." This shows a complete lack of understanding. I spoke to people on the day of the strike last week and the one question that came through time and again was, "What did we do to deserve this?" There are answers on both sides and they can be dealt with. However, the most significant part is that we looked at the situation as matters stood and we made the best of things as we went along.

Last week I heard the contribution on radio of a woman representative of a large private sector group, IBEC, a diligent body with which I do not have a problem. However, I was astonished when, in the context of rubbishing the public sector, she said it would be those in the private sector who would help us to work our way out of the recession. I said to myself that this might well be true, but I then waited for the next bit, for somebody to ask who got us into this mess in the first place. Who was it? It was the banks and the developers, not the public sector. The people who caused this crisis were in the private sector. We all understand and acknowledge this because that is the way it happened.

As I know the Minister of State has been a great advocate and defender of the public sector, I am not saying this in a personal way. However, it is important that, in striking a balance, when people talk about pay levels in the public sector, we should also talk about the tax breaks made available to the private sector at the same time. It is important that we remember the banks shovelled out money. We should also look at the efforts made to allow developers to do things which perhaps they should not have done.

People have asked me whether I was involved in the benchmarking process. I certainly was. The choice was very simple at the time - would the public sector stand by and see everybody else take his or her share of the cake? This was at a time when people had joined the public sector as a teacher, nurse, civil servant, garda, etc. and realised they were not being paid as much as those in the private sector. They acknowledged the job security and the process by which they paid for their pensions. They pay for them over a period of 40 years.

There is talk of people leaving the public sector with a package. I told a story recently about a guy I knew who had been in the private sector but had not worked for 35 years. When he became eligible for the State pension, he received a pension package worth €270,000. If we use the media method of working out the cost of pensions, that is what it costs to give a person the non-contributory old-age pension. Somebody who has paid into a pension fund for 40 years is portrayed as having a package worth €500,000 or €600,000 and suddenly ripping off the country. There is something wrong about this. There should be balance. A couple of weeks ago in this Chamber Members said there was no chance of public service unions doing a deal with the Government or accepting a reduction in pay packets and no chance of peace. We are within hours of such a deal.

My colleague, Senator MacSharry, announced that Thursday's strike was off. That may have been made previous to the announcement but he was probably right.