Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael)

I agree with Senator Cullinane; public and civil servants are a much-maligned group of workers. Their morale is low but they all show up for work every day and put their shoulders to the wheel. They are down quite an amount of money in the last few months.

There are, however, areas that must be attacked. I take issue with Senator Byrne's remarks. Unfortunately I must use the accident and emergency services on a regular basis and they are disorganised. It is the front line staff, not the Minister for Health. They are lovely people, they are always very good to us when we are there but there are organisational issues that must be sorted out in accident and emergency departments and we must get on with that job.

I welcome the Minister of State's agreement that we must work within the framework but selected, targeted redundancies must be an issue at some stage and some incremental pay issues must be addressed. The grade eight structures within the HSE were arrived at under the stewardship of the current leader of Fianna Fáil and Mary Harney, where we came from 18 grade eight employees to over 1,000 such employees. Those are the areas we must examine. I do not know if that can be reversed but that is the cause of many of the pay issues we now have. The HSE was a huge transgressor in that respect.