Denis Landy (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. We have all been on the hustings for the past three weeks. The Minister's name came up in my town because in the mid-1990s he announced and brought to the town the last major industry in Carrick-on-Suir, SRAM bicycle components. We accorded the Minister a civic reception at the time and it was a very good day. We have not had good days since then. I worked in Waterford city for 13 years. It is a little known fact that Waterford is known as the Déise but the Déise actually runs up to the mountain of Sliabh na mBan which is 15 miles from the city. I live in the Déise area.

I endorse every word of what Senator Cummins said about Waterford city because when Waterford city is down, the surrounding areas are down. Many people from my town are working in Bausch and Lomb and many of them will lose their jobs. Like Senator Cummins I only heard about this just before we started this session and I am in shock because I know many people who are working there. I fear for those people but we have to look forward and that is what we will do. This Government is looking forward. Looking forward means carrying out reform such as the Minister has proposed in this Bill, which is to integrate the research and policy advisory functions of FÁS into the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. As the Minister said, why would one use a nettle instead of using ivy but when one goes to pull something from the ground, there is a lot underneath. I do not under-estimate the task.

Every time I stand up to speak in this House I defend public sector workers because they are the most maligned and disrespected group of workers in this country. However, in three weeks' time the second most senior official in Tipperary County Council will retire after almost 40 years of service in the public sector. I have telephoned him on Saturdays, Sundays, at seven o'clock in the morning and at midnight and he has never failed to answer me and to get responses to my difficulties. That is public sector and public service. Those people who criticise them are wrong.

I agree with Senator Barrett on one point he made in regard to the public sector. What we need above all in the public sector are capable senior managers because no matter what job one does, whether selling chips in a chipper or running a Department, one will take guidance from the person above one, who manages one's work and what one has to do on a daily basis. Senior management level is the difficulty.

I welcome this and believe it is a good move but the heartbeat of this country is the SME sector and we must place more focus on SMEs and what they do. I tabled a Private Members' motion more than a year ago on retailing in rural Ireland. When I say "rural Ireland" I mean outside Dublin but including Waterford city, the main streets of which have been decimated. The main streets of my town and every other town have been decimated also. We still have not seen progress on stemming that difficulty. Small retailers or SMEs need help but they are not getting it.

I know the Minister is doing this for all the right reasons. I had a conversation with Senator Barrett before we started this debate. The administration of water, medical cards and education grants has been centralised. Probably less important, the administration of driver licences has been centralised in the sense that it has been taken from the local authorities. All of that has failed miserably. Irish Water is only in place a couple of weeks and last week, for the first time in 15 years, the area in which I live was put on a boil water notice. As a Senator and as a public representative for more than 25 years in the area, I was not informed that the house in which I live and the 2,000 houses around mine were on boil water notices. I spent 45 minutes on the telephone to Irish Water but I could not get a response. I got back on to it the next day and spent another 30 minutes on the telephone. I eventually got a response through the Minister, Deputy Hogan, as a result of his intervention. If that is the way these services are going to go, they should never have been taken from those running them previously. That is just one example.

I think the Minister will detect a certain amount of frustration in the Chamber. Senator Cummins expressed it in regard to jobs in Waterford. There is frustration about many things but we must keep the focus on getting people back to work. I hope this Bill and what the Minister intends to do with it will ensure that. However, I want him to reassure me that this process will keep the focus on what is important, do research on what is important and, most important, create jobs as a result of implementation of that research.

All of the people who have worked in these organisations have worked to their capacity but I question the guidance they got along the way. I fear repeating myself but as a member of a local authority for almost one quarter of a century, as was Senator Cummins and many other Senators in the Chamber, the actions and the functions of the IDA were probably the most bewildering of all the bodies we dealt with. All of these organisations are intrinsically linked. The Minister is bringing this back into the Department and it is important that he, and not a senior person in the Department, oversees it and ensures it works.

I am sick to the teeth of the removal of services from local level in the name of reform as well as the abolition of the town councils in the name of reform. It is actually reductionism and not reform. Reform is when one makes something better by taking an action. This actually removes a service. I ask the Minister to prove me wrong on this one and I am confident that he can do that.