Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for those questions. First, the INMO has decided to ballot but I do not think the ballot has yet commenced. I am due to meet the INMO towards the end of next week. I would ask the INMO to do what it, in fairness, has always done during my six months in office, that is, to constructively engage. It has reaffirmed its commitment to the Lansdowne Road agreement and to operating within it, and I welcome that.

I cannot remember the exact word the Deputy used but she effectively said the Lansdowne Road is dead. There is an onus on anybody who says that to explain where we will find the €1.4 billion that this would result in if we were to immediately end the agreement. We do not have it within the health Vote and I do not believe we have it within the education of the justice Votes. Many of the issues the Deputy rightly asked me about and on which she keeps me under pressure involve spending more money on public services. The budget looked at improving public services, public sector pay in terms of the Lansdowne Road agreement and trying to modestly increase everyone's take home pay in a fair way through tax reductions. If one disproportionately favours any one of those three elements over the other, it clearly impacts on the ability to do the other two, and we must be conscious of that.

However, there has been an ability, through the collective national framework, to address some of the issues which nursing representatives brought to me and my predecessors. I can give two quick examples. One is the unfair anomaly relating to pay for graduate nurses between 2011 and 2015. Approximately 7,000 graduated then and there are approximately 4,000 working in our hospitals. I concede that 3,000 are not, which is a sign of the problem with recruitment and retention. They will see their pay restored by between €1,000 and €1,500 from January. That happened through the Lansdowne Road framework, so there are flexibilities within it. Another example is the task transfer, the ability to recognise that the Lansdowne Road agreement refers to task transfer and that our nurses are doing jobs in hospitals that previously had been done by other health care professionals and must be paid for that. That has taken place now as well.

There are other issues in the Lansdowne Road agreement relating to nurses that need to be explored and discussed. However, it is important that everything is done in a collective manner. I listened to a former trade unionist on the media at the weekend who said that when there was no collective agreement in the past and workers' wages decreased overall. A collective agreement works not just for workers and the Government but for stability for all of us. The INMO is a member of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. The general secretary of the INMO sits on the ICTU public services committee. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform has met with that body and he said this week that he intends to continue to engage with it. I will meet the INMO next week. I always enjoy meeting the INMO because I find it a very constructive organisation. There are issues relating to recruitment and retention, and I accept that some of them are linked to the overall pay and conditions of nurses, but they must be addressed in a collective way. The sectoral, siloed way of looking at things will not serve this country well and it is not Government policy. It must be addressed-----