Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I noted the Minister's commentary about the increments, where he corrected me and stated it would be better put if I had said that some increments should be protected. Would he care to enlighten us as to which of those increments should be rightly protected? In that remark, he seemed to concede the point.

All of my amendments in this section were ruled out of order because they would constitute a charge on the Exchequer. The thrust of them was, as others have said, to bring the primary focus for efficiencies and savings where I believe they rightly belong, that is, among the cohort of those who earn in excess of €100,000. The Minister is correct in stating that we have argued the idea of an emergency pay cap across the public and civil service. He was not really in favour of that. It seemed not to appeal to him. He seemed to be more comfortable going after clerical grades than those further up the chain. Given that he will not entertain the notion of an emergency pay cap, he might have availed of this emergency legislation as a mechanism to deal with those 6,000 persons in the public and civil service who earn in excess of €100,000. What I proposed in my amendments would not constitute an emergency pay cap which the Minister has set his face against but would propose a mechanism by which, finally and clearly, he could address the issue of the glaring pay inequity among those 6,000 workers within the system who earn far in excess of the €65,000, which, the Minister states, is a handsome salary and represents only 13% in the system. Those who are in a far more privileged position represent a smaller proportion of the service. Some of them are not only paid handsome; they are overpaid. By any international benchmarks, they are simply overpaid just as staff at the lower echelons of the civil and public service are in many instances underpaid.

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