Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

We had a good debate on the budget yesterday. For the next week and beyond the main topic of discussion for people will be the budget. Nobody here is certain of what exactly has been agreed in the discussions. There are reports in the newspapers that there will be a pay cut of 7% or similar, which I think is too low, plus 12 days unpaid leave. If it is a case of unpaid leave with no pay cut, we are fudging the serious challenges facing the country. If that is the case, we are letting down good civil and public servants throughout the country. Many of these people have talked to me about the situation. They work hard but they have told me they cannot take the already generous holidays they have because of the workload. To add 12 unpaid leave days to that achieves nothing for them. They expect and anticipate a pay cut and if we avoid that — for whatever reason — we are in a serious situation.

Senator O'Toole spoke earlier about 15,000 people and it seems the 12 days would equate to losing approximately 15,000 or 17,000 people in the public service. McCarthy already mentioned cutting the public service by 17,000. This brings us to 34,000. However, I think we need to reduce numbers in the public service by between 50,000 and 60,000 people. Within the past 11 years public service numbers have increased by 150,000. It would be nice to think we could sustain that, but we cannot. I know of public service offices where the staff in them have no work to do. I have heard that from people working in the same area of those public services.

I can give an example from my area of public servants in the health services being entitled to go home if there is a power cut. A power cut occurred in a building they were sharing with others at 2 p.m. The generator was switched on and power returned but they were told the rule is if the ESB cuts the power, the workers are entitled to leave and so they went home. There is no place for this action in any organisation and particularly not in the public service given the serious difficulties facing this country.