Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am a son of a trade union official and was raised in a trade union house. There are a few basic principles of trade unionism. One is the rate for the job. The Deputy has a different view. Craft workers were always paid more than manual workers and there was pay for skills that were acquired. I believe Deputy Healy, who has some trade union background, will understand that additional skills were paid for. In a society in which people have choice about where they work there is the rate for the job. If one does not pay the rate for the job, one will not get the skilled worker. That is the general rule.

We are having difficulties now in recruiting consultants in particular. The majority of people who would be impacted on by Deputy McDonald's amendment - more than half - are medics in our health system. Let me say to the Deputies opposite that if they talk to the health unions they will make it crystal clear that pay is an issue and the notion that they would allow for no pay restoration at all is something that would not be accepted in reality. here will be difficulties in the continuation of recruiting people as we try to expand our health system.

I will now deal with the nursing issue. We have recruited in net terms an additional 700 nurses since the beginning of last year. We have looked, at the request of the Minister for Health, at incentivising people to come back from England, by giving them relocating fees to help in making that decision, which has helped. I spoke to a trade union official on the nursing side during the week. He told me about a health facility - it was not a unique hospital but a health facility - which was looking to recruit nine nurses. They interviewed, short-listed and then appointed nine people, down to Garda vetting. On the appointed day one person turned up because the other eight had been on a number of panels as every part of the health service is now recruiting nurses. That is what I hear when I talk to people about the issue.

Senior nurses at the top end will earn more than €65,000. We have tried to assist. I know the staff nurse starting off, like the Garda starting off, is relatively low paid. Increments will be restored in the way we have set out in the Bill. Ultimately, the FEMPI legislative architecture will have to be eventually dismantled altogether, and this may be done by me or whoever is in my office next year and the years beyond. That will mean everybody getting total pay restoration over time. As I said, the cuts are predicated on there being an emergency. That has to be certified annually - each July - by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. People will be looking at the orderly unwinding of this to see if it is going fast enough, whether it is in step with the economic progress the nation is making and to see if there is a case stateable to the courts in terms of the existence of an emergency. That will be a call that the future Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform will have to make next summer. He or she will have to justify his or her decision in terms of a presentation to the Dáil in the summer of next year.