Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not just referring to cases of employment. I mean job loss, employment appeal or tribunal situations and other areas of annual appraisals. For instance, the young doctors whom we saw on television. It is absurd that they must work 24-hour non-stop stints. I would be worried entering an accident and emergency unit if the doctor treating me had worked 24 hours. Doctors are also under pressure to supply the middle management of the HSE with head count budgets of this and that procedure. That is wrong, plain and simple.

With regard to the establishment, I salute Mr. John O'Sullivan who has done his bit. We must take a leaf from his doggedness, determination, honesty and fairness in what he did. I know what it is like because I have fought those battles. It is only when people realise that one is not going to give up and will continue to talk in true and fair terms that eventually turns the heavy iron door of the establishment and one is allowed enter. Determination, etc., does not always work though in situations that can be replicated in large numbers, for example, making a claim with 25,000 people in similar circumstances. In that instance the wagons form a circle and the establishment rejects the case until it becomes a major bomb or keg of dynamite with an ever shortening fuse.

With regard to the defined benefit pension funds, we must be brave and courageous. We must step up to the plate and describe the material in easily measured categories that are simple to understand. Every picture of the people can be divided into 12 sections like a jigsaw which is put together to make a picture. We can do the same for employment, training, appraisals and all of that. There are everyday ways of making it sensible to measure, describe, discuss and reach agreements. We should slim down the lever arch files to just six page documents with charts, pictures and bars in order to get a handle on what must be agreed, in principle, and then send the instructions and directions around to put the measures into effect.

We must remember that the single person represents justice. The establishment has multiple layers of professional qualifications and multi-head-counts so there will be huge case law. That means that people will go around and build up costs. The single individual can, in principle, just show the facts. They are obvious to people who want to see them but that does not always happen. There are always obstacles along the way. The first could be a cost of entry. There should not be a cost of entry. One could think that a case did not become a formal complaint and, therefore, the first stage was nuisance, vexatious or frivolous but that would not be the case. I would expect that way of thinking because people will learn that a claim is a bigger mountain to climb and he or she may have other things to do. He or she might have had a new baby and will not want to waste four years of their lives banging their heads against the establishment.

Also, when people exist in this limbo of uncertainty, with questions all over the place, their peers begin to doubt them, and think they are odd and have a problem. That is not fair either. Sometimes there are twisted malevolent people in powerful middle management positions in the public service, private industry or whatever. Those people are not nice and they are very hard to deal with. They are malevolent and destructive. I have outlined the things to watch out for and that is my full contribution with my new status.