Pádraic McCormack (Galway West, Fine Gael)

Fine Gael opposes the Government's proposal to introduce this so-called pension levy for public sector workers. It is an income tax, as it is a levy on the gross income of all public service workers. The motives for introducing the levy were not above board. They were more political than aimed at revenue raising. Approximately 350,000 people are engaged by the public service compared to 1.7 million in the private sector. The Government assumed the public sector was a soft target and it would be more politically correct to penalise these workers than others.

I attended public meetings of concerned public service worker earlier this week, comprising mainly local authority, HSE, and fire service staff and gardaí or their spouses. They are very angry and I do not know why the Government does not recognise this. They are not only angry about having to pay the levy but also about the unfairness of placing this tax burden solely on them. Speaker after speaker at these meetings said he or she was willing to play a part in sharing the burden if it was spread fairly. Deputy Sherlock read a letter from a constituent into the record, which highlighted this issue. The constituent, who is a public servant, said at the end of the letter he was willing to play his part if everybody else was asked to do so. We have all received such letters from concerned citizens about this.

We are in the sorry state we are in because of the mismanagement of the State finances by Fianna Fáil and its partners in Government over recent years and not because of international factors, which is the spin put on this by the Fianna Fáil press office. Fianna Fáil has been in government for 19 of the past 21 years and it has mismanaged the taxpayer's money to fund pet projects such as voting machines, which cost €60 million and a few million euro a year to store but which are now being abandoned altogether, the Bertie bowl, which cost €200 million but was never built, and PPARS, which cost several hundred million euro but was never used. Fianna Fáil has become arrogant over the past 15 years in office and its Ministers are out of touch with the ordinary people. They felt there was no harm with a few million here and there, with support for the developers, speculators and bankers without minding the rest. That was a very dangerous mentality for the country.

I will give an example of the unfairness of this tax. A person in the public service earning €40,000 a year will pay a 7.2% levy amounting to €3,250 per year leaving a net salary of €36,750. However, a person on €300,000 a year will only pay a 9.6% levy of €28,750 leaving a net salary of €271,250 a year. How could that be fair? The Government is penalising the family person on ordinary wages, who will not qualify for a medical card or higher education grants. This is the person being penalised all the time, without any penalty on bank executives earning €2 million to €3 million a year who get a golden handshake when forced to leave their positions and a pension of €150,000 a year perhaps five or six times what the ordinary nurses, teachers gardaí and others in the public sector earn. Those are the people the Government wants to penalise.

Fine Gael is opposed to this so-called pensions levy on public sector workers. We have made proposals for how the Government could raise the necessary €2 billion. Our deputy spokesperson on finance, Deputy O'Donnell, and our spokesperson in finance, Deputy Bruton, have outlined them for the past month. Before the Minister left the House he said his door was always open. It has not been open since this crisis began. However, now that the Government is in "Queer Street" it wants to open the door; it wants to take everybody in and claim it is an all-party thing. We are willing to play our part, but we will not be sucked into taking the blame for the Government's mismanagement in recent years.

Tomorrow night we will have a vote on this motion, but that is not the important part. The important part will be when the legislation comes before the Dáil later this week. That is when people will be called upon to give an account of themselves. Fianna Fáil backbenchers and other supporters of the Government have been down in their constituencies talking out of the sides of their mouths outlining all that they will do. Let them stand up and be counted on Thursday when we vote on the legislation. People will not be fooled any longer; they know what is going on now. The Government has much to answer for having brought us into the sorry state in which we now find ourselves.

See this speech in context