Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The manner and context in which this legislation is being introduced is utterly wrong and unacceptable. This Bill is an attempt to pre-empt and subvert the democratic decision of public sector workers to reject the Government's attempt to impose further cuts in their pay and conditions. It shows the Government was not acting in good faith in the negotiations. While it showed a willingness to negotiate, it also put a gun to the heads of public servants by giving itself the power to impose whatever measures it wished on them.

If it had negotiated with or dealt with public sector workers in good faith, none of this would have been necessary because the original Croke Park agreement was supposed to run until the middle of 2014. It broke faith with public sector workers in the first instance by seeking a new deal. Subsequently, public sector workers rejected a second deal in a democratic ballot, despite the brow-beating and threats deployed by the Government and certain trade union leaders as they sought to force workers to accept further attacks on their pay and conditions. The Government did not accept that decision and has decided instead to ram through this legislation in an attempt to pre-empt another vote. This appears to be a sinister, pincer movement by the Government, on the one hand, and sections of the trade union movement, on the other. Its aim is to demoralise ordinary workers and force through a further attack on them as quickly as possible before people's feet have even touched the ground. That is utterly reprehensible.

Despite what the Minister, Deputy Howlin, stated with regard to the arrangements with the troika, it is simply not true that there are no alternatives to doing what is proposed. Some of us on this side of the House have pointed out on numerous occasions that there are fairer alternatives to attacking public sector employees, low and middle income workers in general, the unemployed and the vulnerable. In the past week or two the evidence relating to those alternatives has been presented to us. For example, one of today's newspapers outlines how if one firm, Abbott Laboratories, had paid the 12.5% tax the Government claims to impose on the profits of corporations, it would have been obliged to hand over in excess of €200 million in tax. However, that firm actually paid 0% tax. We have discovered that Apple, with €22 billion in profits, only paid 0.5% tax. Other companies on the relevant list, such as Google and Facebook, pay pitiful amounts in tax. Instead of taking a little more in tax from these staggeringly wealthy corporations, the Government is intent on inflicting further suffering on ordinary workers, imposing more cuts on their incomes and reducing their quality of life to an even greater degree. These people have been hammered during the past five years and, as a result of this legislation, they will not receive a pay increase for the next eight years. What is proposed is despicable and undemocratic and it should be resisted.

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