Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

-----international human rights legislation. The Bill was published last Thursday and amendments had to be tabled within 24 hours. A total of 51 amendments have been ruled out of order, many of them for no good reason. The manner in which the Bill is being rammed through the House with a guillotine is an affront to democracy. Deputy Joe Higgins can speak for himself. He tabled an amendment seeking that the Bill be renamed as the "Reduction of Public Servants’ Pay, Pensions and Conditions Act 2013" and it is difficult to understand how it was ruled out of order. However, the Bill specifies that it is to provide for "the reduction of the remuneration of certain public servants ... (B) the reduction of the amount of the payment of pension ... and (C) the alteration of the operation of scales of pay for public servants (including the suspension of the awarding, for a certain period, of increments under those scales)". That is exactly what Deputy Higgins specified in his amendment. The amendment relates to what is in the Bill and has been ruled out of order for no good reason. That shows the anti-democratic manner in which the Bill is being pushed through this House today.

The wording in section 1 refers to "financial emergency measures" on a number of occasions. I would like to know whether the Minister believes there is a financial emergency.

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