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

I gave the figures. To cut a very long story short, at the end of the period envisaged in this legislation covered by the Lansdowne Road agreement between now and 2018, someone who was earning €30,000 in 2009 will still be earning less than they earned in 2009. It is the same for those on €40,000 or €50,000. At the end of this so-called restoration of pay they will be earning less than they were in 2009. Nine years after the crisis they will not have had their pay restored, which represents a massive gouging of income at a time of growth in the economy. When those two things are put together, it means that the benefits of the economic growth are not going to low and middle-income people but are going elsewhere. We have considerable evidence of where they are going which is that the wealth of the richest in Irish society has grown exponentially during the period of the so-called emergency and is continuing to grow. The millionaires and billionaires have got richer during this period.

I agree that we should collapse the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation. It would be very good to have to give a €2.2 billion injection to low and middle-income earners and would be good for the economy, not bad for the economy. I accept it would have to be taken from elsewhere and the place to get it is from those at the very top who have massively increased their wealth and assets during the crisis. That would be fair and it would also be a good economic move because it would address the issue I raised with the Minister of wage drift - the reducing share of the national economic cake that is going to wages. The Minister did not respond to that point, but it is a fact. Is that something the Minister wants to do? Paul Sweeney, among others, has said that that reduced share of national income that is going to wages is a very bad thing and needs to be reversed. Does the Minister recognise that? If he does, the Government would need to take radical emergency measures in the opposite direction.