Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)

For the outsider looking in, having a good pedigree has got much to do with whether one is on or off this list. The judges are off it as they have excellent pedigree. We are expected to believe the reason the National Treasury Management Agency is exempt is because it has secrecy in what it pays itself. It sets its own rates in secret and the Oireachtas does not oversee it so it cannot cut its pay rates. That seems a bizarre test for exemption.

The test seems more to be one of deciding whether the cut will ruffle feathers the Government does not want to ruffle. Substitute teachers get no pension but they are determinedly in the cuts. Their meagre daily allowances will be cut by 5% while the National Treasury Management Agency's staff pay rates will not be touched and are so high they must be kept secret to save the employees' blushes.

There needs to be some clarity in this matter. Last night, we were treated to the view that it was those subject to market discipline that would be outside the reductions. Today, we find the Minister unwilling to consider Anglo Irish Bank as the most manifest case where market discipline has failed to curb its activities, yet it will be exempted.

This is a levy that applies to very ordinary people. It seems public servants with access to revenue flows, such as those with the national lottery company, a monopoly with a State mandate, are to be exempted. How can it be conceived that they are not protected by the State guarantee of a pension? They are equally in the same category as all the other public servants. There is a sense of unreality about all of this. The Government is not willing to apply some sort of scrutiny with principles of fairness and robustness.

These grey areas, however, that the Minister claims legislation never tidies up would be made mincemeat of by the courts. I cannot imagine the Minister of State saying in court: "Your honour has to remember these were the grey areas that we had to leave untouched in the Legislature."

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