Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

There are many points to be made. As the Minister stated, the cut proposed for persons on the very lowest pay is progressive and its effect on the pay of the lowest paid is reduced. Substitute teachers are on a special rate of pay that reflects the nature of the work they do. The legislation will affect their rates of pay, but the broad intention is to limit it to those who pay the pension levy.

I do not accept Deputy Hayes's point that a 5% cut slashes people's pay. It is not of that order and the fall in the cost of living has been approximated. These are painful decisions and nobody wants to make them, but they must be made so that those who are paid, whether on social welfare or on the public pay bill, can continue to be paid and the cheques made out to them honoured. I am a little puzzled. I am sure the Deputy will hasten to correct me if I am wrong. The Fine Gael budget proposals included reducing the threshold of the health levy from €26,000 to €13, 500, which, in the rhetoric of this debate, is called impacting on the poorest of the poor. I wonder how much consistency there is.

I must declare an interest with regard to Deputy Burton's point about contract researchers. I have a daughter in precisely the position she described. She came home within the past four years and bought a house, not quite at the peak of the market but not a million miles past it. She is on a substantial level of pay. Given the money that was put into scientific research, although most contract researchers do not have tenure, they are paid reasonably well while researching. I do not in the least deny there are problems and I will hasten to assure my daughter that Deputy Burton is defending her cause.

We must be careful on the subject of fairness. Is it fair to treat part-time workers differently and more favourably than full-time workers simply because of their absolute levels of pay? One could be in danger of creating an entire new set of inequities if one was not careful.

A number of Deputies raised the issue of those whose income is low because they work only a certain number of hours. It is not possible to exempt any group from the impact of these pay reductions and in many cases we are only reversing the last couple of pay rises because we have imposed a low rate of reduction on those with salaries below €30,000. The reductions are progressive and the point was made that if people at the bottom are exempted, the progression is made very sharp. Obviously, I do not accept rhetoric such as "war on public servants". I hasten to add it is not really relevant to this amendment but the debate has ranged extraordinarily widely.

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