Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and wish him well with this legislation. It is a very short Bill but it is very important. I am disappointed by some aspects. It does not go into great detail on benchmarking. I was a Member of this House when benchmarking was introduced. It was supposed to be the bee's knees for the way forward but we have not done any analysis of where we are with benchmarking or what we achieved with it. It gave huge pay increases, not least to us in this House and to the Members of the other House. It gave huge increases to the public sector. It drove up a lot of costs. I would like to know what we have achieved since the then Minister, Mr. Charlie McCreevy, brought in benchmarking going back 20 years. It is time we had a big analysis of that.

I welcome the Bill and many of its contents. I very much welcome Sláintecare. It is great we would have fully dedicated consultants working on behalf of people in hospitals and in health areas. Restoration for teachers is also very important. It is important that pay is increased for new entrants to the teaching profession. All those things are very welcome.

The Tánaiste outlined there will be two week's sick pay for workers. There is maternity, paternity, statutory redundancy of two weeks and now we have sick pay. All this has to be paid for. People who are working are quite entitled to all things, not only the public sector but also the private sector, but to get them they have to be paid for. How are they paid for? They can only be paid for by collecting taxes and increases in product prices. There is no doubt the prices of products will have to be increased to pay for all of these things. It is only right the people who are working would get well paid and have all these entitlements that are outlined.

There is a golden opportunity to open up the public sector. It is a closed shop and this Bill does not address any part of it. Look at John Bruton, for instance. He was the European ambassador to America; quite a big job. He would not qualify to be an ambassador of Ireland to even the smallest country in the world. I do not know where anyone from outside the Civil Service was brought in to be an ambassador. There are quite a lot of people who have graced the Houses of the Oireachtas, Dáil and Seanad, such as Bertie Ahern, Enda Kenny and Brian Cowen. Is there any reason they would not make great ambassadors for this country? This is an area that should be looked at. This Bill should encompass those things. We should have a good debate on those issues. The public sector is a closed shop in many cases. It is very difficult to come from outside to get into the public sector. You do not have the experience, you do not have the knowledge, you do not have this or you do not have that. That is what people are being told from the outside when they try to get into the public sector. We have an independent body that selects people for those jobs but it is an area that should be looked at. These Houses should play a more hands-on approach on some of these issues.