Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

I have pursued this matter with the Minister for months on end.

When I suggested to him in respect of the big pension pay-outs that he claw them back or even not pay them, the Minister told me initially the Attorney General's advice was it could not be done. However, he clearly can impose levies because he has set out such a scheme of levies in this legislation. Again, however, the Attorney General claims a 100% levy on every euro over €100,000 cannot be done either. These big pension pots cannot be really touched, bar in a light-handed way. I find that utterly unacceptable.

I am mindful that it is only a small number of people with these types of pensions. Earlier this morning, I had an exchange with the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs - the Minister's party leader - on Leaders' Questions on the fair and balanced appropriation of teachers to disadvantaged schools. What the Government is proposing for DEIS schools is confiscatory and deeply damaging to a set of people's rights. It can be done, however. We are told it has to be done because we are in a state of emergency.

In asking the Minister to accept my amendment, I am doing nothing other than asking him to live up to his word. If one proposes to take a radical action, one will always find the advice that it cannot be done because people will beat a path to the High Court. If this is how the Minister is going to base his decisions on how to deal with runaway pay in the public and Civil Service, he will never deal with it.

The reason we are discussing the public sector is the Bill specifically refers to this sector. At no stage have I said that those on massive wages or who have massive wealth in the private sector should be let off the hook either in this time of crisis when we need measures in the public interest. It seems that, politically, the Minister understands that something needs to be done about these pensions because I am sure, no more than anybody else, he has gauged public opinion on this matter. The woman or man on the street does not think that a public or civil servant, however brilliant or accomplished, should be on a pension of €125,000 per annum. The Minister knows he needs to do something and he is doing the minimum. His action is timid.

My amendment stands. If fairness meant something and a fair distribution of the burden of the crisis meant something, I would not have had to table the amendment because it would have been tabled by the Minister. However, there is one rule for the very well off and an entirely different rule book applies to the average woman, man or child in this State.

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