HIGHLY-PAID Ministers and civil servants would not be able to secure similar salaries in the private sector, Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton claimed.

"I do not know many companies in the private sector queuing up to employ top civil servants or former ministers at a rate of €200,000 plus," she said.

"Why would they? They get far better people for far less than that." Ms Burton accused the Government of being unable to deal with the crisis of the unfair structures it had allowed through benchmarking and the decentralisation fiasco. "This has harmed the core of what was a very good public service ethos," she added. Ms Burton said many civil servants had become the butt of ferocious attack by various commentators because angry and bewildered people were looking around for someone to blame.

Although, in reality, people valued their teachers, nurses and doctors, the Government's mismanagement of the economy had unleashed a torrent of abuse against public servants because it created an elite in the top echelons of the public service and at ministerial level, she said.

She added that there existed at those levels a climate of privilege and salary entitlement beyond the dreams of most ordinary families.

Ms Burton was speaking during a debate on a series of supplementary estimates introduced by Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea.

Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton predicted that the Government would double the national debt in less than four years.

"The golden rule that used to guide public borrowing policy - that one should borrow for capital purposes only - has been cast aside," he said.

"By the end of this year 30 per cent of the Government's borrowing will relate to day-to-day expenditure. The figure will double to 60 per cent next year." The State could not raise money from international bankers only to use it for day-to-day spending.

"At this time, it is vital that we use money to invest in the infrastructure this country badly needs," he added.

Mr Bruton claimed that Taoiseach Brian Cowen, had fallen asleep at the wheel when he was minister for finance.

"He failed to recognise that the underlying strength of the Irish economy was deteriorating seriously and became totally obsessed with the property bubble," he added.

"He pretended that it was based on sound economic fundamentals. The core of our small open economy was exposed and gradually undermined." Mr Bruton said the State's export market share had collapsed over five successive years, with Ireland becoming the most exposed to the ravages of the international recession.

Sinn Féin's Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said they did not know what further cuts in vital public services were in prospect.

"In the Christmas period, and in the dark days of January before the resumption of the Dáil at the end of that month, we will learn of further savage cuts in health, social services and education," he added. Sinn Féin would join with citizens in fighting those cuts and that was the party's pledge to the Fianna Fáil and Green Party coalition in the dying days of the current Dáil session, he said.

Mr O'Dea said that each of the departments requesting funding had made offsetting savings. The majority of the supplementary estimates were technical in nature, he added.

"Where additional monies are required, they arise from exceptional circumstances which were unforeseen at the time the original expenditure allocations were voted on," said Mr O'Dea.