Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)

We can have a game of semantics or a genuine debate on what is happening. What is happening is that since last autumn, through the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the sectoral teams, we have been working on plans. The Minister, Deputy Howlin, will be submitting a report to the Cabinet next week setting out their extent. The plan in question was initiated by the former Government, which set the date. Effectively, public servants were allowed to make a decision up to a very late date and, consequently, the number leaving was not actually clear. We must deal with this. We pay managers a lot of money to manage. It is not the task of politicians in Leinster House to micro-manage sections of the public service across the country. These people are paid good money to manage and it is their task to do so. We see very good examples of such management in hospitals. Speakers mentioned the accident and emergency wards. Why is it that we have very good practices in some of those wards but not in others? The reason is good managers who decide to take responsibility, who put it up to the staff and lead. It is not a deficiency of front-line staff.

If I am honest, what I have seen is a lack of management throughout the public sector. There are probably too many managers. One of the great aspects of social partnership was the explosion of the managerial class within the public sector, reporting to nobody, taking no responsibility, having no aspect of project management. That is what we must weed out and thereby ensure that if people are paid well to manage they will manage the nurses, doctors, teachers and those who operate within the local government system. That is crucial.

I stated that the increments issue might come up again if we do not get reforms over the line. I have made that very clear and I stand by that position. To take up from what Senator O'Keeffe observed, that is the sting in the tail. We have an international agreement and this is part of the memorandum of understanding, as Senator Sheahan noted. We have a deal here with our external funders. This could all be on the agenda again if we do not have the money. If a new external shock were to come into the foreground it would produce a response. We hope that does not happen because we want to work with the public sector in making sure we get these changes.

However, I cannot predict the future. I do not know what will happen in six weeks, never mind six months, given the scale of the international crisis we face. We have managed it pretty well so far but there will be difficulties. Let us be blunt. Taking 40,000 people out of the system is a dirty way of doing what is required but I am not convinced there is another way to do it.

I am not convinced that one can micro-manage a system. I appreciate what Senator Mary Ann O'Brien said because she employs 100 people. However, it is slightly more complex in the public sector, which has 300,000 people and 150 grades, where there are people at professional levels and others coming into service on a contract basis, where people provide services for others who are utterly stressed because they cannot find work in this country. It is a slightly different set-up.

There may have been a view that we could achieve all this by selectively moving personnel and thereby reduce numbers by 40,000. Such a view is not genuinely honest about how the world works. What has happened has been very difficult. I heard the comments of Eddie Molloy, a much respected expert in the area of public administration and he said it was dirty but there was no other way of doing it.

As for those who have been putting forward alternatives - how real are they? We will see a radically different public service but the whole objective is to keep the front line in place while altering the back office staff. There will be fundamental change for people as we do that but we have the capacity within the Croke Park agreement to do it.

I want to nail this issue-----