Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

My Independent colleagues in this House tell me that up and down the country, An Post provides a vital social service. However, the Government refuses to subvent or finance it. For the past three years the Government has financed it by shortchanging postal workers and more scandalously, pensioners of An Post, a very vulnerable group. The Government has then used as whipping-boys the postal workers themselves.

As the Taoiseach should know, the Labour Court recommendation was not binding because An Post insisted on that. When the union then exercised its right not to accept the recommendation, a process of vilification began. I query what justice the postal workers can hope for from the Labour Court since a few months ago, that court told Irish Ferries to go ahead with its outsourcing of labour and its bonded worker employment.

How can the Taoiseach justify pensioners in An Post being denied their increases? Will he instruct the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources to value the crucial role performed in our society by thousands of workers such as those at An Post, rather than insult them? They drag themselves from their beds on cold wintry mornings many hours before most people arise. What does the Taoiseach think of the unease in the trade union movement generally because the Government has reneged on and broken the agreement the Taoiseach solemnly made with the unions three years ago?

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