Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim míle buíochas leis an Aire as teacht isteach agus as a chur i láthair freisin. He opened his presentation with increased pay allocation. There has been a significant debate over the last number of months on the enormous increase in the cost of living. That relates very clearly to pay allocations right across the public service, in his own Department and obviously in the rest of society as well. That rapid cost-of-living increase is reducing the purchasing power of every citizen throughout the country. Thus, people's real income currently is falling countrywide. The Government has stood four-square against trying to ease that difficultly by reducing VAT or even asking the EU for a derogation to reduce VAT because of this crisis. The Government has also stood four-square against the idea of wage inflation to maintain the purchasing power of citizens. Despite this, we heard the unbelievable news that top civil servant Robert Watt, who awarded €81,000 last year, was also in receipt of a €3,000 increase in October on top of his wage. On one level citizens are dealing with cost of living spikes, we had a deficit of €7 billion and when he was in last week the Minister mentioned there was €3 billion in tax that has been warehoused because businesses could not afford to pay it, yet the Government is actually involved in creating wage inflation among the political and Civil Service class. How is that acceptable in any way?