Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To respond to the Deputy, I have a responsibility across this year, to this committee and to the Oireachtas, to explain how we will pay for the €120 million, alongside delivering the other commitments that we have for 2017. I will discharge that responsibility across this year. The reason I have brought forward that proposal for €120 million, and I am confident I will be able to identify that figure, is that because in previous years, leaving aside the issue of buoyancy and what happens in tax take, processes and work that my Department has done have yielded figures that are higher than that. When I complete the work I am going to do across this year on how we will pay for this bill and the detail of how we will pay for it, I will be accountable to members and I will discharge that responsibility. I am confident that we can deliver that figure and have outlined the process as to why. During and at the end of the process, I will answer and will be in a position to answer Deputy Doherty's questions.

Alongside that, the Deputy talks about his responsibilities. I also have another responsibility. All of the events to which I am referring and to which I am now responding, in particular the magnitude of the Labour Court recommendation and the scale of difference that meant to the public pay bill, happened after I put in place the budget for 2017. It is my assessment that if I do not respond to this now, the figures I might need to find in the second half of the year will be many scales larger than the €120 million on which the Deputy is challenging me now. That is why I have made the decision to which the Government has agreed today. While there is a challenge regarding this figure - the Deputy is justifiably raising it with me - the amount of risk I would face in the second half of the year if I did not do what I am doing now would be many quanta bigger and many multiples of what I am facing now.

The Deputy is correct that I have a duty to explain how I am going to find this figure. Will this be in higher expenditure? Will it be in the reallocation of expenditure? Will it be in other choices that we make? I will account for that across this year. To conclude on this point, unless I deal with this now, my assessment is I will face larger risks and larger figures in the second half of this year. While I will not read it out again, as the Deputy already has heard it, I read into the record of the committee the recommitment that has been made by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, on industrial stability and the Lansdowne Road agreement. That is essential to the decisions and issues we will face in 2017 and beyond.