Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I will start where Senator Alex White left off. This is one area where leadership is key, and not only at Government level. Senator O'Toole, I believe, made the point that if most people subscribe to a particular roadmap, it is very important to have leadership to advance that right through the different sectors, not leaving it to one or other individual Department.

I commend the Minister of State, Deputy Calleary, on the work he is doing, because it is key to whether the initiative will be successful. The national newspapers today are talking up the situation in which Ireland finds itself. I am on the Council of Europe and last week we had a plenary session. Many people admire Ireland, including the Cypriots, Greeks, Portuguese and Spanish for the serious efforts they see taking place within the country to try and address the situation speedily. Even the British delegation commented in the knowledge that Britain, after the general election, was having to face up to issues that had long been resolved by Ireland in terms of having solutions implemented.

I agree that timelines are important as regards when things should happen, and I expect to be criticised for this in a second. However, timeframes within which progress can be measured are crucial.

Senator Fitzgerald, in her contribution, said that much of the Croke Park agreement was aspirational, and viewed this in a negative light. However, if one does not have aspirations there is nothing to aspire to. If the goals are too low, they are too achievable and therefore are not a challenge. We must have goals as regards what is attainable, but we must have aspirations too.

I am endeavouring to put balance into the discussion, because sometimes in topics such as this we can tend to bash one sector or another. I spoke to the Minister of State on this earlier today. When disaster strikes there are individual agencies and people that one looks to. There was a car crash earlier this summer in which there was serious and sad loss of life, and in the event the ambulance and fire services on call as well as the gardaí represented many people giving of their time, along with the voluntary sector working with the health sector, to support the families and community. In so far as we are talking about reform of the public service, it must be remembered there are very many individuals and agencies within the public sector that are more than willing to take up the cudgels and be part of the solution, as Senator Alex White indicated, to try and progress matters.

We cannot impose solutions on people. I agree with that point. A solution must evolve.

It does disappoint me that even though we have a framework for reform - perhaps not a roadmap or a timescale, but a framework - some major union leaders who have, I believe, signed up to the agreement, are still holding public meetings to assert their concerns, as they would put it. This raises the question of when one should express one's concerns and when one should lead. It is terribly important, as the Minister of State mentioned, that union leaders who have signed up to the agreement are not talking out of both sides of their mouths. We all understand the challenges and the hard decisions that must be made in implementing the agreement. There have already been hard decisions, including cuts in wages. I agree with Senator Harris in this regard.

I taught in Derry before I became a Member of the House, and I left quite a low-paid job with a lot of technology at my fingertips. I arrived here and was given an office in Kildare House with a phone with no answering machine, one computer and one fax machine for the whole floor. I came here in 1996, which was a technological age, but nothing that should have been there for my role was there. I am thankful that this has improved.

In this era of technology, those in business have access to time study reports, and companies are looking to their weakest areas and outsourcing them. I spoke to members of Business in the Community about this. If a company is spending too much on recruitment, it hires a recruitment firm to recruit for it. Companies identify areas that are not their core business and outsource them. That is the type of thing we have the capacity to do here. A time study done within all Departments and the different agencies would throw up many obvious difficulties that could be dealt with.

Human nature rebels against change because we fear it, but much of the change that could be accomplished is not to be feared but something that would make people's lives a little more enjoyable or challenging. It is important that we try to address this issue.

The Minister of State made the point that the agreement is a key step in addressing the immediate fiscal and economic challenges facing the country. European politicians and commentators are watching what we are doing and they are impressed that we are taking on these challenges. The moratorium on recruitment and so on have posed their own challenges, but we must be careful about treating such things as individual issues, because there is no such thing as a broad-brush solution that can apply to everybody.

There is much to be said in this regard and I am glad we will have more opportunities as the months go on, to consider issues such as joined-up Government, the one-stop-shop concept and the health service. It is important not only that we identify the problems but that we have a process to deal with them and implement solutions that have been offered. None of us wants to see services affected in our hospitals or schools, but we must maximise the potential within this and other agreements to ensure efficiencies and an effective approach. There is much scope for this and we must lead.