Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "That" and substitute the following:

"Dáil Éireann declines to give a second reading to the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (No. 2) Bill 2009 having regard to the decision of the Government to collapse talks with the public service unions that could have delivered major public service reforms and the savings required in the public sector wage bill and the unfair nature of the wage cuts provided for in the Bill, particularly for low paid workers.".

Fianna Fáil, backed by the Green Party and Independents, has brought forward this Bill, to reduce the pay of every employee of the State. The Labour Party opposes it because it is unfair, unjust and unwise. The Bill is unfair because those on the lowest levels of pay – the workers who are paid less than €600 per week – will see their income cut by 5%, while the same budget took little or nothing from those earning more than €6,000 a week. It is unfair because this is the second time in a year that the same public sector workers are being hit with a special pay cut, on top of the income levies and cuts being experienced by everyone else. It is unfair also because, as we heard from the Minister, Deputy Lenihan, at the weekend, Fianna Fáil intends to come back for more pay cuts next year and pension cuts after that.

This Bill is unjust because it will enable Fianna Fáil to loot the incomes of public servants in order to pay for the mess it has made of our good economy. Fianna Fáil is raiding the pockets of nurses, gardaí and hospital cleaners to pay for the crisis in which its favoured treatment of property developers and greedy bankers has landed us. It is unjust too because these cuts are the culmination of a nasty, Fianna Fáil-inspired campaign which has divided our country against itself. Fianna Fáil sowed the poisonous seeds of division, and turned a crisis of its making – in the construction and banking sectors – into a crisis in public spending where it could justify cutting public sector pay.

This Bill is unwise because the public sector pay bill could have been reduced in a better way, a way which would have delivered not just pay savings, but the long-term and permanent reform of the public service itself. This Government is too short-sighted to look beyond the next headline. That long-term, permanent reform of public services was on offer from the trade unions representing public sector workers, but it was rejected by a stupid Government which reneged on the reforms it had already agreed because it chose to look tough rather than get results. Cutting public servants' pay is the easy option. It avoids the need for a forensic examination of Government waste, duplication of services, and overarching patronage in the past 12 years. It means there will be no drive to reform.

Let us be clear about why we are here tonight. We are here because Fianna Fáil colluded with big developer donors and its elite friends in the banks to fuel an unsustainable property bubble. It did nothing to moderate the house prices and commercial rents that made it more expensive to live in Ireland than in almost any other country in the world.

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