Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I find the comments from most of the parties surreal at the moment. There is a consensus in this House to ignore two important factors. Very soon Fine Gael and the Labour Party will be in Government. They will have to face, as Senators Healy Eames and Butler have pointed out, not a dig-out, but a loan, a bank overdraft that has to be paid for. If it is paid at 5% and the full facility is drawn down we shall have to find up to €6 billion a year to pay it off.

In spite of this knowledge all the political parties in the House conspire to agree that no matter what pain and misery is inflicted on the poor, the welfare class and everybody else, the public sector remains unaffected. Like the dreary steeples of Tyrone and Fermanagh, the judges will still get their €9,000 for the studies and the Ministers will get these incredible pensions that sometimes would take up to €35,000 a week to finance in the private sector. Still the gap between public and private sector pay remains at around 30% and 70 cent in every euro the State spends is on public sector pay and pensions. We are not all in it together, and we are not going to get out of it together. No matter what happens all parties agree that a golden circle is to be drawn around the public sector.

The media are the same way, and are terrified of the public sector too. Its members are paper buyers and have powerful unions, the political class is afraid of them and nobody will speak the truth. By the way, I never saw the IMF wimp out in any country except Ireland. It went to Latvia, Argentina and all over the world. The first thing it did was to cut into public sector pay and pensions, but not in Ireland. It is wimping around Ireland because it has been seduced, hypnotised and told, in effect, by a nod and a wink from all the political parties to do anything it wants, but not to touch the public sector.