Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)

I accept that the Government has made progress. My concern is with the Croke Park agreement. We have heard much back and forth on this. The Government has taken a position which is that in order to reduce the pay bill significantly, we are going to fire, retire or down-size. Regardless of the mechanism used, we will have fewer workers. What we will not do is pay less. At a time when we are trying to keep people off the live register it seems to be a strange absolutist commitment not to touch wages. The only way the wage bill will be reduced is through having fewer workers. This does not seem to be very sensible.

During the troika negotiations has the Minister come across, as the Technical Group did last week, higher end public sector pay - accepting the changes and progress being made - being an impediment to write-downs?

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