Public services should be opened to competition to deliver a better service to the public, the Labour Party leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, has said.
The speech marks another stage in his effort to reposition the party's attitude towards public services in advance of local and European elections next year.
Committing Labour to high-quality public services, Mr Rabbitte said the party first had to examine some important questions.
"We must begin by talking about our general attitude and approach, as a party, to public services. It is an attitude which I believe merits re-examination and modernisation," he said.
"When we are talking about public service reform, we must not fall into the trap of automatically and in all cases taking the sides of producers.
"There are consumer interests which are valid and important and which must be protected. There is little point in saying that we will protect the interests of one small group of workers, because they are workers, if that means imposing a burden on a far larger number of consumers who are also workers," he said.
Irish people were increasingly conscious of how they were being treated, particularly since the introduction of the euro had highlighted "the phenomenon of rip-off Ireland".
"In particular, we are often inclined to focus our attention on the providers of public services, rather than on the consumers of those services," Mr Rabbitte declared. He was delivering the Michael O'Brien memorial lecture in Waterford.
The speech, which is available on the party's website, www.labour.ie, will be closely watched by trade-union leaders..
"It marks a development in thinking. But we have not yet got to the stage where we will offer the hard choices and tell the public sector what they must do," said one party figure last night.
Despite the Government's declaration that it is pro-business, Mr Rabbitte said, it had actually made the business environment 'much more difficult in many ways.
"It is now harder for business to get its employees to and from work or to get its goods to market. On a whole range of issues, including basic requirements of a modern economy like broadband Internet access, Ireland is falling behind," he said.
He went on: "All this means that the task of the left is more complicated than it was before. The class struggle may have been difficult, but it had the advantage of simplicity.
"Today there is a much more complex balance to be struck between a variety of interests - capital, labour consumers and society." The Labour Party will be faced with more difficult choices in future, he warned.
"What if creating more choice for consumers can only be done by introducing competition to a sector which was previously regulated?" he asked.
"The left is increasingly coming to realise the importance of competition in protecting consumers, although that is not a blind faith in competition for its own sake.
"Neither can we support a competition which becomes a 'race to the bottom' where environmental standards and workers' rights are abused in the interests of higher profits and capitalists."
Emphasising the need for reform and investment in public services, the Labour leader said the Government had operated a stop-go approach towards them for years.
The Government's strategy had been designed to win votes at election time, followed by post-election major cutbacks, he claimed.
