Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

I want to add my voice to the chorus of calls for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to come to the House to debate the important topic that is his responsibility. There are good budgetary reasons for doing this. We are now half way between the last budget and the next, which will be particularly difficult. The soft options are gone, given the failure to tackle the real issues the last time around. A debate is also important from the point of view of having a good, strong, effective, efficient and dynamic public service. We are fortunate to have many good people in the public service, but like anywhere, it is not consistent across the board that everybody is performing. The rehiring of retirees brings the service into disrepute. The retirements should have been focused from the start and the plan should have been refined when the Government came into power.

Recently, we have seen that people have been getting bonus payments, with almost no criteria being applied. The bonuses ended up being paid to everybody, which removed any incentive for people to perform well and for people who worked hard and performed up to the standard required. Increments are also an issue but the Minister turned his face against this.

This is the only sector in our economy in which people are getting wage increases. There are serious issues, many of which are symptomatic of one significant failure, which is the failure of management. Management in the public service is not encouraged. I recall speaking to a union leader two years ago and when I put the question to him, he said there is a series of grades, not management within the public service. Unfortunately, that is the position. We have far too hierarchical a structure within the public service and, as a consequence, people who do not take risks. People who protect themselves and do not make mistakes within the system are rewarded with promotion. We need to get away from that and we need to align the public sector with what is happening in the private sector where initiative, hard work and performance are rewarded. I ask that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform come to the House as soon as possible to debate this. Staff numbers in the public service increased between 1997 and 2007 by 150,000. I do not accept that we cannot have significant reductions in numbers while, at the same time, enhancing performance but the system needs to identify and harness that dynamic.