Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to speak on the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2013. It is important to dwell on the Title of the Bill before we go into the specifics of the legislation and discuss the contents and what is involved.

It is being introduced under the procedure called financial emergency measures in the public interest. I ask the Minister to spell out to us when he believes the financial emergency will come to an end. He concluded his speech by noting that the final section of the Bill provides for the preparation of annual reports for the Oireachtas which will also encompass previous legislation. I welcome that measure and will be tabling an amendment to confirm that we are still in a financial emergency. If the financial emergency no longer obtains, nothing under this legislation should have effect.

The Minister indicated that the NTMA and the RPA have been removed from the Schedule, which lists most of our commercial semi-State bodies. I have tabled an amendment to ensure that annual reviews confirm whether the Schedule remains accurate. By removing two bodies, he has accepted that the Schedules contained in previous Acts require legislation. These bodies are not exempt from the emergency measures that applied heretofore. From one perspective, this is a positive development because these are commercial organisations not directly under the control of the Minister and are required to cover their own costs and make profits. I refer to big organisations like the ESB and An Post. The Minister did not want to micro-manage these organisations, many of which are competing against private sector companies. However, many people working in the public service take a jaundiced view of their compatriots in semi-State companies not being included in the cuts. ESB employees have received a number of pay increases in the past year or more for what people see as public sector work. I am conscious of these opinions in my constituency of Laois-Offaly. I barely need to walk out my own door to meet civil servants and employees of the local authority and the HSE. A significant number of people living in my village work for Iarnród Éireann, ESB or An Post. Debate rages on occasion in the pubs as to why some are getting cuts and others are not. Generally they thought they were all public sector workers. I am not saying they should be brought into the Bill but the review should include an assessment of whether the Schedule is still appropriate in its current form. The Minister is introducing two amendments for good reason. Perhaps we should also consider the banks that are in State ownership. I do not see a difference between the ESB and a financial institution that is in full State ownership and provides a service, albeit poor. I am not coming down one way or another but the case needs to be considered. Perhaps an argument could be made for including all organisations that receive the majority of their funding from the Exchequer.

We have a number of problems with the Bill. Our first problem is the use of the guillotine because we think rushed legislation is bad legislation. This Bill does not need to be guillotined. We also oppose the inclusion of reductions for pensioners were not party to any negotiations. A decision was made unilaterally even though the Minister spoke at length about the need to negotiate and opposed previous Governments' decisions to introduce pay cuts unilaterally. That is precisely what he is doing to public service pensioners, after excluding them from the talks.

The Minister stated that he wants to reach a deficit target of 3% by 2015. Will the financial emergency end if we reach that target or will it extend beyond that date? If, by good fortune, we meet that target earlier than 2015 will this legislation fall or no longer be necessary? The Minister spoke about a required consolidation of €3.5 billion in 2013 and additional savings and revenue raising measures of €3.1 billion for 2014 and €2 billion in 2015. However, he lost the battle on the most important aspect of these figures, namely, the breakdown of the adjustment, or consolidation as he likes to call it, between taxation measures and expenditure cuts. Most of the adjustment has been achieved through cuts to current expenditure. The Minister might cut capital expenditure but I might then increase capital taxation to balance the equation. Very little has been raised in additional capital taxes. The amount has been much less than 50% of the required consolidation, which results in cuts to those who rely most on the State's services. People hoped the Labour Party in Government would stand more firmly against further cuts without additional measures to increase revenue. When we begin to deal with Estimates and the budget for next year, I hope we will see a 50:50 balance between expenditure cuts and increased taxes. The Minister referred to the amounts without referring to the split, which is equally important.

This is a short and easily understood Bill which sets out to reduce the remuneration of certain public servants on higher rates of pay in excess of €65,000 and suspend incremental progression for three years for all public servants unless they are covered by a collective agreement that modifies the terms of the incremental suspension and which has been registered with the Labour Relations Commission. It also gives the Minister powers to set terms and conditions of employment for public servants so as to reduce the remuneration or increase the working time of those public servants. My major difficulty with the Bill is that it also provides for a reduction in pensions payable in respect of certain persons who are currently in receipt of public service or occupational pension schemes or pension agreements. That issue has not yet been discussed and the individuals concerned have been excluded from the process.

Why are we now discussing this Bill? We started a couple of years ago with the Croke Park agreement, in respect of which we are still awaiting for the third annual implementation report for 2012. I recognise that the Minister's officials have been busy but it is important that people are made aware of the progress that has been made so they can know the starting position of what was to be the Croke Park II agreement until it was rightly rejected by public sector employees. We told the Minister that the new agreement was unfair. We did not tell people how they should vote on it but we made it clear that aspects of it were unfair and disproportionate. Cuts were inflicted on people earning less than €65,000, mainly through the reduction of the Sunday premium for those who look after our health and security at weekends. A key issue that arose from discussions with individuals working in the public service was that it was not family friendly in terms of the additional working hours required.

Many parents value time at home with their children. They are very concerned about the quality of child care and always want to get home as early as possible to look after their children. Many public servants believed the additional working hours built into the Croke Park II were worse than a pay cut. My party told the Government within hours of the agreement being published that people would vote against it for that reason.

The Minister has since produced the Haddington Road agreement, whose publication at lunchtime last Thursday dovetailed with the introduction of this legislation. The new agreement breaks the mould because, for the first time, it is not a collective agreement across the public service. The Government's decision to have a series of bilateral agreements for different sectors will have knock-on effects. Separate agreements have been drawn up for the Irish Prison Service, the Defence Forces, an Garda Síochána, the Civil Service and non-commercial semi-State bodies, craft groups and the education, local authority and health sectors, respectively. The agreement also includes an appendix dealing with traditional hours for certain grades, depending on which agreement covers their work. As a result, eight different agreements need to be agreed between line Ministers representing the Government and the trade unions in the relevant sectors. We do not have an overall collective agreement by the public service committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. From that point of view, I am sure the other party in government is pleased that ICTU's public service committee has been effectively stood down as part of the Haddington Road agreement.

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