Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For the purposes of this discussion, we are discussing the public sector and its pay bill. There is a shared commitment, as Mr. Shay Cody put it, to reduce the pay and pensions bill dramatically. Members of his union and others have taken a substantial hit. However, there remains a segment of people at the top who still earn very high wages by international comparisons. It strikes me, as well as many trade union members, as odd that the leadership of the trade union movement has not named this issue and made some proposal to address the inequity of the system. The unions presided over pay cuts which people felt in their pockets.