Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The capitalist press, notably the sections owned by tax avoiding billionaire exiles, regularly uses the anachronistic nature of many allowances to ridicule, undermine and treat with contempt public sector workers in general. It tries to create the impression that all such workers are living as if they own goldmines. If the interests of the public sector in the Department of the Taoiseach are of importance to the Taoiseach, I suggest he consolidate these allowances with pay rates generally for low and middle income workers, while scrapping them completely for the high flyers in the public sector who are paid more than €100,000 per annum. That would make it clear to everyone that the bulk of public sector workers were on low or middle incomes - some of them are on very low pay - and suffering grievously under the Government's austerity policy. At least, that much would be clear. Will the Taoiseach lead by example in his Department as an example to the public sector generally?

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