Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

As the details of the new Croke Park deal become clear, it is evident this Government is going to continue its vendetta against low and middle income public sector workers, who have seen between 15% and 20% of their income cut over recent years. With levies and the universal social charge, they have given up €1.5 billion in savings, shed thousands of public sector jobs and seen their pensions cut. Now, in the form of cuts to premium payments and extended working hours which amount to pay cuts, these workers are to see further devastating cuts to their income. The Taoiseach seems to have a particular vendetta against shift workers and other front-line workers who work unsocial hours, many of whom will no longer be able to pay their mortgages and, if they could just about manage to do that, come this summer when the Taoiseach imposes the property tax on them, they certainly will not be able to pay their mortgages or their bills.

Is it not the case that not only are these cuts to public sector workers cruel and unfair attacks on hundreds of thousands of public sector workers and their families, but they are also a further devastating blow to the rest of the economy, including private sector workers? In all the narrative we get about this from the media and elsewhere, there is a suggestion that, somehow, the private sector will benefit from the axe being taken to the public sector. Will the Taoiseach admit the truth, which is that for every euro that is taken from a firefighter, a nurse, a teacher or a council worker, that is a euro less that will be spent in shops and businesses in towns, villages and cities across this country, leading to more job losses in the private sector and to further contraction in economic growth? Is that not the truth about these cuts, namely, they are anti-worker, anti-job, anti-growth, are bad for the entire economy and are completely unjustifiable?

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