Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

Apart from the injustice of visiting pay cuts on low and middle income public sector workers, what about the economic irrationality of it? If the Government takes money out of the pockets of ordinary workers who spend in the economy, it has a detrimental effect because demand is reduced and the economy contracts. The only public sector reform we should examine is one that deals with excessively high salaries of those paid with public money, whether it is in the top end of the Civil Service, semi-State bodies, politicians or bankers. These are the people who should take the hit, rather than ordinary low and middle income workers who have already been slaughtered with pay cuts.

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