MINISTER FOR Health Mary Harney yesterday questioned whether public sector pay rates should have been benchmarked against pay in the private sector.
"There may be areas that we might have done differently with hindsight," Ms Harney said of Government policy in recent years.
"Should we have had a benchmarking exercise benchmarking public sector pay against private sector pay?" she asked.
"Perhaps we should have benchmarked public sector pay against public sector pay in other countries, for example," she said.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said Ms Harney's "sudden realisation" that the benchmarking process "has failed" was "seven years too late".
Ms Harney said there had been a failure in the implementation of regulation. Ireland had "very strong" corporate governance regulation, she insisted, but added there was "a failure by the authorities to enforce the regulations. Of that there is no doubt."
On the global economic crisis, Ms Harney said Ireland was caught "in a wider issue". The European Union's decision that bondholders would have to "share the burden" meant "it would be impossible" for a country such as Ireland to raise money on the international markets at a cost "that was affordable".
Commenting on recent calls by Fianna Fáil backbencher Ned O'Keeffe for Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to stand down, Ms Harney said she had "huge confidence" in Mr Lenihan. "I think he has done an awesome job in the last two years."
