Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will be very brief and ask the questions together. The witnesses have done work on which allowances could be consolidated and the allowances they want to see continued. I ask them for their views in this regard.

One cannot make public comments about the Croke Park agreement without being pitted as for or against it. It has good elements, but it also has absolutely ridiculous elements. It is absolutely ridiculous that an agreement is in place which protects the lowest paid in the public sector but which hospital consultants can also use as cover to protect their pay. Treating everyone in the public sector the same does not work, just as treating everyone in the private sector the same does not work. That is my view on the Croke Park agreement and I want to state it very clearly because it is often distorted. I do not expect the witnesses to publicly negotiate a second Croke Park agreement, but do they see room for a more targeted agreement which would not lump a local authority caretaker with a county manager who might be paid the same salary as a European Prime Minister? That is what this is about. I do not want to scare Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, but she and I share common ground on this issue.