Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Does the Taoiseach endorse the overweening arrogance of the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, who last week insulted, bullied and threatened 8,000 postal workers because they dared to exercise a democratic right to vote for industrial action over a pay dispute? Does he endorse that Minister's threat to privatise the postal service because post office workers demand the single figure wage increases which the partnership policy of the Taoiseach's Government awarded all workers three years ago under Sustaining Progress and which has not been paid? Scandalously, An Post pensioners have equally been denied these increases to try to blackmail their working colleagues. Does the Taoiseach think the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources has any moral authority in attacking workers to whom the State owes substantial amounts of money when his most recent big idea has left the taxpayer with about €52 million worth of obsolete chunks of scrap metal languishing in air-conditioned warehouses at a further cost of €1 million to the taxpayer? If I recall correctly, these machines were supposed to be used for voting.

This is the same Minister who never lost an opportunity to vilify another cohort of workers, namely teachers, when he was in a dispute with them. What next? Will he threaten to replace the postal workers with semi-bonded labour and the abuse of migrant workers such as is the case at Irish Ferries, if they do not toe his line?

Is this what partnership has come to mean for Government? Is it any wonder SIPTU members are refusing to go into talks for a new agreement when there is blatant reneging on the last agreement, which still has not been honoured?

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