Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I welcome the Minister and congratulate him on his appointment. In one respect at least, I strongly welcome his proposal to cut down on custodial sentences. I have long believed that a distinction should be made between crimes against property and crimes against the person. I see no reason crimes against property should be punished by jail sentences, except perhaps in the cases of bankers who cause a whole nation to go into economic meltdown. Otherwise there would want to be very strong arguments for imposing custodial sentences.

Having said that much to the Minister, who is one of the people who defines what it is to be a professional politician and who has given such great service in the Oireachtas, it is about the last kind thing I will say to him because he is one of the primary architects of this coalition Government. From the beginning, he made it clear he wanted the Labour Party in it.

There is no particular merit about a strong or stable government unless it takes on very difficult and controversial measures. Some of the best governments in the world have been minority governments. Fine Gael funked governing as a minority government and implementing the controversial measures of which I speak. Like a steeplechase, every government which comes in faces a Becher's Brook. The Becher's Brook this Government faces is not the banking crisis because that is largely out of our control. I may be proved wrong about this but I predict that no major move will be made in Europe. I believe the European banks behaved irresponsibly here but nevertheless realpolitik indicates we are getting money — the bailout — at a fairly decent interest rate. We will have to pay it and short of a long-term restructuring of the debt over a long period of time, we will not get much from Europe and we must stand fast on the corporation tax rate. That is the bottom line. That is not the Becher's Brook this Government faces.

The only value in having a strong and stable government is that it would be able to tackle to the real Becher's Brook which is avoided by every government in this country, namely, reform of the public sector, particularly the difficult part of that reform, that is, freezing wages and pensions in the public sector until the private sector catches up with it and passes it out. Government must face the fact that €20 billion must be found every year, the bulk of which goes out in public sector pay and pensions and in social welfare. I may be a former socialist but I am not one for hitting the social welfare class but I am one for hitting the public sector. I do not want it done in any kind of catch-as-catch-can shotgun way. It is not beyond the wit of man to devise a system where public servants who are giving value for money are rewarded rather than those who are not. I am afraid there are many thousands of time wasters and time servers in the public sector. I could give chapter and verse about the scandals in the public sector, which are innumerable. We heard about another one in recent days — the privilege days — in which this incredible arbitration was delivered that stated one could not take the days back because it might cause a sense of grievance. The whole point of having this huge Labour Party majority is to impose a sense of grievance on the public sector. I want all of them to be grieving, all of the time servers and time wasters, who come in at 10 a.m., go on a tea break, take another in the afternoon and close up at 4 p.m. We have all been through this with the public sector.

On the general theme of political parties, do not hit me with the nurses, firemen, doctors and gardaí. Gardaí and nurses are well paid by European standards. They do not deserve pity. As I said, those who do are in the private sector, those who get into lorries and cars to commute, who bring their children to the crèche every morning, who are paid one third less than those who work in the public sector who are in pensionable and permanent employment. I repeat that it is not beyond the wit of man to devise a system whereby those doing a day's work will be rewarded. There should be no mercy shown to those in the public sector who have been drawing down in this brutal recession €1 billion in increments and long service payments just because they are in a job.

A sum of €20 billion must be found every year. As far as I can see, the dodge of the Government, as it was of the previous Government, is to do anything except to bell the cat of the public sector. Let me predict something for the Minister, Deputy Shatter. If it is not done by the Government, it will fall and have a shadow over it. Every Government has what Napoleon called a hinge, a door to push in. If the door of public sector reform is not pushed in by the Government, in spite of having a vast majority, it will be a disgrace. What is the point of having such a huge majority? A huge majority is of no value unless one delivers hard medicine.

Our bankers are facing jail; it is clear where the process is leading. The builders, the so-called capitalist class, are on their last legs. There are no groups in this country that are as well off now, in relative terms, as huge sections of the health executive and local authorities — workers with their days off for Puck Fair and Punchestown. How must this seem?

These are my last remarks to this Seanad. I am not seeking re-election and will not want to serve if I am appointed. I have an appointment with a radiographer tomorrow. I want to say what I believe about what happened in the past few years. It stemmed from two things, one of which was a lack of a sense of humility. We in the political class did not have the humility to cut our wages and change our conditions fast enough to appease the public. It would not have solved the crisis, but everything was done too late and too slowly. The obscenity of political pensions and salaries, particularly the pensions paid in the past few months, and judges not taking cuts were the matters that really drove the public mad. As the saying goes, Ní hé an bochtanas is measa duinn ach an tarcaisne a leannan é. They might have coped with the crisis in the banks somehow, but seeing Ministers depart with huge pensions was the obscene insult that really galled them.