Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)

I have made it clear that this is the first Government ever to take serious proactive action to deal with hope in the public service. We reduced pay by between 5% and 30%. A 30% reduction was taken by the Taoiseach. That should be acknowledged. I also placed a pay ceiling on the public service so that no one in the Civil Service or public service should be paid more than €200,000. That has been largely implemented except where contractual obligations precluded us from implementing it. In those cases, I sought a voluntary reduction. In the semi-State sector, we introduced a ceiling of €250,000 and when considering that multiples of that sum were paid up to last year, the Deputy should acknowledge the remarkable achievements of the Government in reducing public-----

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