Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am surprised and somewhat disappointed by the attitude of the Deputy opposite. The premise on which he asked his questions is false. The annual amount of savings required is €1 billion. It starts this year, although clearly this will be a half year, and it will ratchet up to €1 billion in annualised savings by 2015. The Deputy's percentages are wrong, therefore.

In regard to the Deputy's point about fairness, this is a fundamentally fair deal and many objective observers have taken the time to analyse the document. We have considered this very carefully. One of the Government's prime objectives was to extract the money we need in a way that is fair and affects everybody to some degree, and to ensure it affects those who are best able to bear it the most. This is why we are introducing a pay cut for those earning more than €65,000.

With regard to those in receipt of premium payments and on front line, there are people who work relatively short hours and maximise their pay by making sure it is in the premium sector. Some of that is required. There are various elements to it, the first of which is how the rosters are determined. Some people find themselves rostered for an extraordinary amount of Sunday and holiday work and, obviously, the rate is paid. We intended to reduce Sunday pay by one quarter, from double time to time and a half, but we settled on reducing it by only one eighth, to time and three quarters. We have examined who would be affected by this change and found it is fair and balanced. If one was to pick somebody who works only on Sundays or works a disproportionate number of Sundays and premium days, one might find him or her to be well outside the norm. However, taking 290,000 public sector workers, this has to be a complicated agreement in order to be as fair and objective as possible. We have made it complicated but, objectively, it is fair, unless one takes the extreme.

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