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

It turns on the question of whether it is an emergency. The Minister has not responded to this. Is it an emergency? Are we in the emergency, out of the emergency or on the way out of the emergency? If the Minister is claiming we are out of the emergency, why do we have an emergency Bill? Why is the Minister retaining a range of the elements he put in place for cutting wages with most of those cuts remaining place? We have not mentioned the deterioration in conditions, the unpaid work, the increase in working hours, the reduction in the annual leave allowance, restrictions on flexi-time, the new sick leave scheme, halving entitlement to sick pay, the power for the Minister to freeze increments. Why do all those remain in place if we are out of the emergency? Yet the Minister is retaining them in this legislation.