Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister for Social and Family Affairs and her hard-working staff of civil servants. It is worth recognising that all these changes will be implemented by public and civil servants who will have taken a pay cut by the end of the week. When they lift their newspapers each day, including yesterday, they find themselves being treated like dirt. I would like the Government to support the public sector, including the Civil Service, and to recognise the huge contribution it makes. As I have represented teachers all my life, I appreciate that it is easier to sell what teachers, nurses and gardaí do than it is to sell what civil servants do. Those of us who work closely with civil servants would like to record our appreciation of the complex and difficult jobs they do. Given that they will not get that from the media, they deserve to get it from their employers. I ask the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, to bring that message back to the Government.

It is sickening to see the way the public service has been treated in the public media over the last year. Where is it all leading? Like many members of the trade union leadership, I have been saying this is part of the Government's agenda. It is not just about having a go at the Civil Service and the public service. My colleague, Senator Quinn, clearly articulated where it is all going when he said earlier this evening that we need to reconsider the minimum wage. Everyone who thinks strategically recognises that one of the reasons the Government has reduced social welfare is to have a level on which to start reducing the minimum wage. That is the way it is. It is interesting to examine the argument that the minimum wage should be reduced because the cost of living has gone down. I was present when the minimum wage was negotiated in 2000 or 2002. The idea of linking the minimum wage to the consumer price index was on the table at that time. The trade union movement was always prepared to discuss it, but it was opposed by management and the Government. It is interesting to observe how views change and people shift their positions to suit themselves. I am still prepared to consider the possibility of cementing the relationship between the minimum wage and the cost of living index, as it goes up and down. That would be a fair way of proceeding. One could not argue against it. It must go up as well as down.

Many of those who have looked to history to compare this budget to previous budgets have suggested that Fianna Fáil took similarly hard decisions in 1987. While the hard decisions that were taken then caused hurt in all sorts of directions, one felt there was a certain fairness about the approach to this country's difficulties. By contrast, the Bill that the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, is currently bringing through the House is hopeless, ruthless, callous and grossly unfair. It is strange for an Independent politician like me to assess the positions being taken by the various parties. When I examine what the Government is doing now, I am not reminded of 1987. I am reminded of 1946 and 1947, when a Fianna Fáil Government started to hit the public sector, which led to strikes and all sorts. That Government was absolutely destroyed in the 1948 election, after 16 years in power. New parties emerged as huge opposition to the Government developed. That is what is happening now. When I hear Fine Gael correctly saying it will reverse the salary cuts being proposed by the Government if it gets the savings it wants from the public sector budget through the transformation of the public sector, which would be welcome, it is clear that these are strange times indeed. That would be a fair and correct thing to do. Over the years, I have felt that most public servants are Fianna Fáil voters. I may be wrong about that, but I cannot prove it one way or the other. I predict that there will be a significant change in that regard at the next election. I do not think public servants will vote for politicians who have taken money out of their pockets.

Every day, as I walk down the street, I am reminded that I was involved in the benchmarking deal in 2002. Indeed, I was the main negotiator for most of that process. In all the discussions on this matter, I have not heard one commentator make the point that the 8% taken from public servants in last April's budget was exactly the same as the cost of benchmarking. As I recall it, from the top of my head, benchmarking involved an increase of approximately 8% in the public service payroll. That was all taken back earlier this year. I do not mind being hit with these cuts. I think people like me should be hit. I have no difficulty in dealing with that. However, I cannot explain - I have not heard anyone else explain it - the decision in the budget to reduce social welfare and cut the salaries of people who earn less than €30,000 per annum, at a time when nothing is being done to make life more difficult for people outside the public sector who earn €150,000 or €200,000 per annum. How can we justify that? That is the only question I will ask. It is a total impossibility. There is no fair way of explaining that. I was on Molesworth Street half an hour ago talking to these people and I know this is what really annoys them. I spoke to teachers who said to me: "If they are going to cut us, cut us. That is fine. We can do that. But why is it being done in this way?" Why is the Government not touching anybody who is earning big money in safe, secure jobs in the private sector? There are many of them, although there are also those in the private sector who are suffering badly.

This is a classic example of robbing the poor to save the rich. The Minister cannot explain to those people why we have to put huge amounts of money into the banks. I will defend that. I spoke to a group of them a while ago and I tried to explain the importance of the economy and the banks, how we need to support them and so on. They might grudgingly support that, but they cannot understand how we can take from the blind, social welfare recipients and public servants while, in the middle of all that, we do not ask the rich in the private sector to pay a shilling extra. Surely, there is something utterly wrong about that. I use the word "rich" loosely in this context. Let us say I mean somebody on my salary.

Another issue which has been raised is that of PRSI. Fine Gael clearly proposed to raise the PRSI limit. Who could argue against that? Fine Gael has argued we should put in place systems of support for people in employment rather than letting them go on the dole where we get nothing back from it, because the money would be better spent in this way. That is a view which is widely shared and one that is being put in place in Germany and various other countries in Europe where it is seen as a better use of money.

I listened on Sunday to Padraic White who has been involved in this area at all sorts of levels for years. He said that this is a most disappointing Government which is strategically weak. He could not see the strategy to put incentives into the economy. It is an interesting point. I would look at this issue without a party political hat. I hear what is going on and look at every part of it. I talk to teachers, and the Minister of State will know teaching every bit as well as I know it. To take the school she came from, tomorrow morning it will still be an established and growing school but it will have no structure of promoted posts. How will it operate? These are the issues that are being hit.

A definite issue is how the Bill has hit dental treatment, which is counterproductive, whatever way we look at it. As a schoolteacher, I remember people came to the schools to talk to the teachers, so the teachers would talk to the class, so that everybody would understand the importance of oral hygiene and how it is a saving for the State. Now, the support for dentures, extractions and fillings is to be abolished, among other issues, for people of a certain income who were supported previously. How can that be right? It is also taking money out of the pockets of the dental profession. In a small town, taking that money is to take it from the town's economy. If it is not being spent, it is not going anywhere.

There is no strategy. I do not believe Fianna Fáil knows where it is going on this issue. I do not believe there is a long-term strategy. It is closer to 1946 and 1947 than to 1987 because the position was different in 1987. The Government has managed over the past year to completely destroy the morale of public servants at all levels, particularly in the Civil Service, which people are leaving in droves. At the start of last year, the question being asked in the media and elsewhere was why we do not have any economists in the Department of Finance. I wonder has anybody figured out the answer. We did not have them because we did not pay them enough. That is the reality.

We should certainly put in a place a benchmarking process that goes up and down. I have always been in favour of that, because it is the way it should be. The minimum wage is the same in that it should go up and down. However, once one buys into it, one buys into it and cannot just change it every year. We will pay the price for this. One thing about the public service is that we always got quality people into it. The whole idea was that the strategy of the State was to recruit, reward and retain the best quality people in the public service. The Government walked away from a deal with the unions. I do not understand why it did so, but that is its own business. That is the Government governing. However, I had to listen to the Minister for Finance on television on Sunday night saying: "If they do not like it, we will give them more of it next year, and we will cut more from them." I thought I would never hear a Minister in charge of the public sector, which is one of his responsibilities, say that to his diligent, loyal, superb, supportive workforce. I believe we are going down a slippery slope to the bottom. This will become ungovernable very shortly.