David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and welcome the tone of his speech. He set out a good context for today's debate and I welcome that.

I also wish to dispel the notion that running public services is the same as running income generating businesses; it is not. Of course there must be efficiencies but the health service, the Garda Síochána and schools are not income generating businesses and there is a world of difference between running a business and running a school or a hospital.

Senator O'Brien made the point that trade unions represent their members and protect their interests. Of course they do; their members have taken a significant pay cut of 15% across the board in recent years. Any more cuts to the disposable income of low to middle income public sector workers will have a dampening effect on our domestic economy so it makes economic sense not to hit low to middle income workers in either the public or private sector at this point.

The Minister of State said there is a need to embrace further changes and for Croke Park to be driven on. I met some of the unions in recent days and the reality is that many of these changes are being embraced by the workers and the unions, who are pushing for these reforms, but much of the resistance comes from management and the Minister of State should reflect on that. The evidence exists to suggest redeployment, rostering, secondment, creating efficiencies and increased productivity are all happening. There have been savings of €280 million in payroll costs and €308 million in non-payroll costs.

People mentioned the media and I want to read one quotation, which spells out where much of the opposition to the Croke Park agreement is coming from. On 27 November 2011, Brendan O'Connor wrote in the Sunday Independent, and I know we should not take Brendan too seriously:

That is why this story tells us everything we need to know about this Government. Suddenly we understand why old people will be booted out of their homes, why special needs children will not be allowed to go to school, why hospitals will be shut down, why everything will be sacrificed before they will touch a hair on the head of the public sector pay.

That flies in the face of the reality faced by public sector workers. It is important in this debate that we pay tribute to those public sector workers on the front line providing services and doing more for less up and down the country, in our schools, hospitals and local authorities. This debate should be about protecting public services, citizens' rights and those who work in our public services who are doing a tremendous job above and beyond the call of duty in the difficult circumstances they face.