FINE GAEL’S plan to reduce the number of public servants by one in 10 could cost up to €1 billion in severance payments, according to party leader Enda Kenny.
When outlining his party’s plans for public service reform yesterday, Mr Kenny said the money would be borrowed. He said Fine Gael was committed to protecting frontline services and there would be no compulsory redundancies.
“Fianna Fáil have a plan that includes 12,000 of a reduction in the public service numbers. Fine Gael’s plan envisages a further 18,000 in addition to that between here and 2014.”
Asked how much severance payments for voluntary redundancies would cost, Mr Kenny said: “It could be as high as €1 billion.”
He went on to say the figure would be “somewhere between” €800 million and €1 billion following a prompt from Fine Gael’s enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton. A spokesman later said the figure should be viewed in the context of €10 billion savings that the plan would ensure.
Mr Kenny said he rejected the Labour Party’s “storm the Bastille” approach to renegotiating the EU-IMF bailout deal.
“I have a very different view from the Labour Party here in this sense, in that it is not possible to storm the Bastille as it were and say I’m here to negotiate and you must respond to me,” he said.
“This is a case of understanding how negotiations and diplomacy actually work in the European context and it is about building those relationships, which I’ve been working on for a few years in terms of my participation within the European People’s Party.”
Commenting on the TV3 debate between Fianna Fáil and Labour’s leaders, in which he declined to participate, Mr Kenny predicted Micheál Martin and Eamon Gilmore would “have a good fireside chat”. He said the meeting he was attending in Carrick-on-Shannon while the debate was on air would be streamed on the web.
Mr Kenny said he looked forward to meeting them in a “five-star debate” on TV3, along with the leaders of the Green Party and Sinn Féin, as well as in the two “three-star debates”, one on RTÉ 1 and one on TG4.
Mr Bruton said Ireland was “in a difficult place” because 40 per cent more was spent than was raised in revenue. “We have to live within the means that’s available from taxpayers. So the choice of reform or not reforming is one that we can no longer postpone.”
He said Fine Gael believed the key to a successful economy and public service was to “modernise, reform and make our public services more efficient”, while other parties favoured raising taxes.
“We believe and evidence shows that that route, raising more and more taxes to deal with the deficit problem, simply prolongs and makes the recession more difficult,” Mr Bruton said.
