Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With the agreement of the House, I will share time with Deputy Pearse Doherty.

I am pleased to contribute to this debate, given that the issue of pensions in all its guises has loomed large in public debate in the last number of months. The state pension has been threatened, the Government has looted private pension funds, allegedly to fund investment in jobs, although the jobs have not materialised, and the issue of the large pension pots enjoyed by bankers, former politicians and senior civil servants was raised earlier today in the House.

The Government amendment to the motion is galling and bewildering. On what planet does paying oneself €200,000 a year conform with professing leadership and a strong policy of remuneration restraint? Just when we thought the brass necks of Fine Gael and the Labour Party could not shine any brighter they propose a counter motion such as this and dazzle us all the more. Far from being defenders of pay equity, Government Ministers have reduced themselves to giving voice to disgruntled senior civil servants some of whom feel hard done by on their six figure salaries. Last month, at a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform told the story of how, at a previous meeting, a senior public servant passed him a note complaining that he was now earning only half of what he had earned in the private sector. Poor him. The Minister's Secretary General rowed in to tell the committee that a salary of a measly €200,000 a year was not the only problem. Apparently, accountability to the Oireachtas was also an issue, and this was something he said "we needed to reflect on".

Far from delivering the democratic revolution, the Government is creating a new kind of elite at the top of the public sector. I have no doubt the irony of this is not lost on citizens. While Labour and Fine Gael Ministers clap themselves on the backs, low and middle income families are worse off under the stewardship of the Government.

Women, in particular, are feeling the brunt of Labour's austerity policies. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, has her eyes firmly set on women in her mean-spirited and unnecessary cuts to the State pension. Deputy Burton knows full well that the new requirements she introduced in September for new claimants to State pension hit women hardest. Many of the women affected were forced to leave work because of the marriage bar, as it was called. Many of them cared for children, families and elderly parents, and now they are penalised. Deputy Burton actually described this regressive measure, as she introduced it in September, as fair and equitable. The Government, and Labour in the middle of it, is intent on dismantling every element of progressive social policy that was fought for over the last century.

The motion before us is weak. It does not express sufficiently the support those who feel their pensions are threatened deserve. How can the proponents of the motion make an argument against the standardisation of tax reliefs in respect of pensions? That is, clearly, a fair thing to do. Under the current regime, 80% of pension tax reliefs go to the top 20% of earners. That is not fair. I do not understand why the blanket call to protect those reliefs is being made and I do not share it. Fianna Fáil, as ever, has a nerve to argue for a review of excessive pensions which they designed and delivered.

I hope the Government, in its final response to the motion, will clarify that there will be no further attack on the State pension.

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