Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I support the comments of my colleague Senator Mac Conghail. There is a tendency among all Departments, whether it is intentional, to centralise power unto themselves. It is a bit like sucking everything back into the mothership. When it comes to matters of culture, in particular, and matters in which independence of mind and creativity are involved, we need to be careful about removing independence from cultural institutions.

The Minister has a difficult portfolio. Like my colleagues, I thought his speech, which set out the achievements his Department has had since it was set up, was very good. I went through the programme for Government before I came here this evening and it was quite impressive to be able to tick so many of the boxes. A number of points are worth bearing in mind. Any government will be judged on the reform in which it engages - more, perhaps, than on any other single item. This is despite the fact that the media seems to be more concerned about the Croke Park agreement. I did a media search on this and was surprised by the amount of material that splurged forth, in comparison with the amount of material that came out on the reform agenda. I found the level of what is nothing short of vilification of some of our public servants in the media - although not by all of the media, I hasten to add - quite worrying. There is a certain attitude among some parts of the media that the public servants of this country are fair game. It is an issue about which I have significant concern. That attitude is reflected in the morale of some of our public servants. People forget that in spite of all the difficulties this country is facing, we do not face the difficulties of Greece or some of our other European partners. We are not facing into the winter worrying about whether we will have power shortages and so on. It is easy to forget that a period of industrial unrest could overturn an awful lot of the good work that has been done in this country. Some of the commentators on the Croke Park agreement and on the public servants of this country should pause before they conduct some of the conversations they tend to have about our public servants.

One concern I have relates to the changes in allowances for entrants to certain professions - although I can understand the reason for them - compared to the allowances and pay scales granted to those already in the profession. For example, in the teaching profession there are significant differences between the salaries earned by new entrants and those earned by those who are already within the profession. I know the reasons behind that, but I am concerned that we may create a two-tier public service - a pre-recession and a post-recession public service. I am conscious of some studies done prior to the current recession that showed we do not have an excessive number of pubic servants and that the cost of the public service when compared to those of other OECD countries was, surprisingly, not excessive. As a Government, we have significant cuts to make, but it is important not to undervalue the contribution of public servants and to be careful as we move forward that we do not create a two-tier public service.

Much has been made in the media of allowances for public servants.

It was said that it was a bit of a quick solution from the previous Government to not deal with the difficulties around lower paid public servants.

I am reminded of perhaps a rather unpopular debate that took place in the British media around the expenses of politicians. The entire debate centred on such and such a politician building a moat around his castle in the middle of nowhere, and someone else who was supporting three luxury apartments in a prestigious development in London. What did not come across is that the reason all the abuse was happening was that there was not an adequate system of allowances within the UK political system. The allowance system we have today was put in place because previous Governments ? we all know who they are ? were unwilling to face the issue of lower pay among certain grades of public servant. It was easier to give an outdoor allowance, uniform allowance or one for walking around in the playground than to evaluate the real difficulty of low-paid public workers. The Department is dealing with the issue. I accept it will be a difficult obstacle to overcome.

A certain amount has been said about the significant successes of the Croke Park agreement.