Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I want to deal with one issue only and I will try to deal with it with some brevity. This legislation, based on the State being confronted by a financial emergency, seeks to bring about public sector wage decreases that affect the public sector across the board in a broad range of areas. In the context of dealing with the pension issue, there are also deductions for former public sector employees who are now retired, including pensions payable to members of the Judiciary.

The big gap here is the type of protection that we would like to apply to those on the minimum wage but which applies in spades to members of the Judiciary. The members of the Judiciary have not been affected by any of the public sector wage decreases that have occurred. Even when it came to the pension levy, they were excluded from it, although as a result of public comment and pressure, the vast majority have now opted into that.

There is now a major difficulty in this area, one that I predicted when, on behalf of the Fine Gael Party, I published, in November 2009, the Twenty-ninth Amendment of the Constitution Bill. That Bill contained a provision to facilitate a constitutional referendum being held so as to ensure if there was a general deduction in public sector wages-----

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