Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I have been listening to the Taoiseach's replies to Deputy Ó Caoláin and Deputy Kenny. To be honest, they sound like replies from some time in the dim and distant past. The game has changed, the Taoiseach changed it when he sent the public service trade unions away from the bargaining table in his Department the week before the budget. There is now no social partnership. The Taoiseach ended the talks with the public service unions and IBEC has withdrawn from the pay terms of the partnership agreement. We are in a new situation where there is a free for all. It may not have manifested itself too clearly yet other than in the work to rule issues that have arisen in some areas since.

I have listened for the last half an hour to the Taoiseach talking about talks that I doubt will ever take place. Who will the Taoiseach engage with? Does he propose to engage with those people who, at the beginning of 2009, he led up the garden path and, when they had agreed cuts of €2 billion, sent them away and introduced the pension levy? The Government did the same in November, in that it led them up another garden path, brought them to the point at which seven or eight documents on public service reform were on the table and then collapsed that process, unilaterally cutting their pay. What type of engagement does the Taoiseach believe he will get and does he believe that those engaged in the previous talks will be in a position to deliver their members on something he has been discussing for the past 30 minutes but which I doubt will occur?

What will the Taoiseach do about our new circumstances? We are not in a centralised bargaining situation any more and we are not in a social partnership arrangement. We are in a new situation of a free-for-all wherein any group of workers is free, since there is no national agreement, to serve pay claims or, as a number have done, notice of industrial action if it wants. The issue now is what will the Government do to respond.

The second issue about which I would like to ask the Taoiseach concerns the decision made to vary the terms of the pay cut for senior civil servants. I want clarity from the Taoiseach on a number of aspects. Last week, we were led to believe that the number involved was 160. Now, we are told the number is 600. How many public servants are benefitting from the change made in the terms of the pay cut during the Christmas period and what is its total cost?

See this speech in context