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

That is true. IMPACT Dún Laoghaire branch produced a leaflet with a table showing how much public sector workers at different pay levels had lost during the emergency years annually and overall. A worker on €30,000 lost €16,000; a worker on €40,000 lost €27,000; and a worker on €50,000 lost €38,000. Under the Lansdowne Road proposals provided for in the legislation €4,000 would be given back against the figures of €16,000, €27,000 and €38,000. That is pathetic if there is not an emergency which the Government claims is the case

Does the Minister recognise the increasing consensus among a cohort of analysts, economists and so on who consider income inequality to be the major contributory factor to economic instability and crisis? He may be familiar with a brilliant paper by Paul Sweeney entitled, Wage Drift, which I read recently. It outlines the reduction in the share of total national income, GDP, represented by labour and wages, as opposed to capital, and shows that Ireland is one of the worst countries in this regard. We have had one of the greatest reductions in the OECD in wages' share of the national economic cake since the 1970s. Surely that is another reason the Government should radically reverse the cuts in income. This should be done not only because it is unfair to people who have made such sacrifices during the so-called emergency.

It is also sound economic policy to give something back to workers, to narrow the income inequality gap that has grown and to rebalance wage share in terms of the wider economic cake. Does the Minister not agree that needs to be done as a matter of urgency? It is not what has been done in this budget and this legislation does not do it in anything other than a tokenistic way.