Eoghan Harris (Independent)

As we speak, a cylinder is ascending through solid rock carrying the seventh or eighth of the Chilean miners, and I know that all of us who have followed Chile and its struggle to establish over the last 30 years will salute the epic achievement of the Chilean people, and the Chilean and other engineers who have achieved this. I do not think I have to labour the point about co-operation.

I would like to clarify what I mean by consensus and the public sector. I understand why Senator O'Toole would be protective of front line public sector workers like teachers, firemen and so on, as Senator Buttimer was yesterday. I have included myself in that list by mentioning librarians, and have been mocked for it. When I say that I believe in consensus, it is not that I start with some sort of obsession about consensus, but because I know there is a problem in getting political cover for the kind of reforms needed in the largest single area in which we can achieve those reforms. That area is the public sector as a generality. I am talking about the great mass of the HSE, the great mass of waste, the huge salaries paid out to semi-state employees in the ESB, the huge salaries paid out to politicians and that vast gudge of stuff in the public sector. To achieve savings in this area, we need political cover.

There is no way to reform the public sector in that broad sense except by parties getting together to give each other political cover. That is the be all and the end all of it.