Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him for his speech. As was the case with the discussion on the Ombudsman (Amendment) Act 2012, I assure him of the support of this side of the House for his vital reform agenda.

The Minister referred to sick leave arrangements. ISME provided information to the effect that three days per year are lost in small enterprises and six in medium enterprises compared with 12 days in the public sector. It used the statistics to criticise the Minister?s colleague, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton. I agree with the point made by the Minister that tackling the sick pay problem is important. I also fully support him on lobbying. I will return to the issue in due course.

Such reform as the Minister is undertaking is an international task. An interesting book was written on the subject last year by Vito Tanzi from the IMF and the University of Cambridge. Many countries are facing debt-to-GDP ratios of 120%. The issue with which the Minister is dealing has an international dimension, from which I hope he derives support. He could give lectures as well as receive them because we have allowed Government expenditure and an entitlement culture to get out of control in many areas. Tanzi mentioned that strongly. When one adds up the entitlements and they exceed the tax capacity of the country and its capacity to borrow and the country is required to go broke, we must examine the culture. The matter was addressed a long time ago by a previous Government in the publication, A Better Way to Plan the Nation?s Finances. I welcome the Minister?s reforms, including the Fiscal Responsibility Bill and other legislation which was enacted last year. We look forward to the imminent Bill sponsored by the Minister coming to the House.

We must examine our instruments and targets. For example, which health programmes make people healthier and which poverty alleviation programmes score well on the alleviation of poverty. The Department has a crucial role to play in that regard. Departments grow up as independent republics with the object of maximising their own budgets. When we add up all the maximised budgets it is more than this country can afford, which is part of the restructuring of the entire operation we must now attempt. That is what the Dáil and Seanad were elected to do. It is difficult. The second half of a marathon is always much more trying than the first half.

We have a bureaucracy problem. According to an bord snip the higher echelons of the public service grew by 17%. That was three to four times higher than the increase in the number of public servants as a whole. That is the scandal that results from bureaucrats maximising their budgets.

The previous occupant of the chair in which the Minister is sitting was the Nobel Prize winner in economics.