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

This is unbelievable. I bristle because the term is simply a euphemism for cuts. It is as simple as that. We do not need fewer public sector workers, we need more public sector workers. We need more people cleaning the streets, cleaning the graffiti off the walls and building social housing. We need more social workers, more people working with the vulnerable in our society and more people helping to maintain our public services, facilities and amenities. We need them more than ever because the private sector has shown itself completely incapable of creating employment or of dealing with the situation that we face in this country.

In case the Minister has not noticed, we have an astonishing unemployment crisis. Investment has collapsed since 2007 to the tune of billions of euro. There are little investments here and there but they are set against a general backdrop of massive cuts in capital expenditure by the State and an overall collapse in investment in the economy. To cut back in the way the Government has in public investment and public services is bordering on the criminal. Moreover, for the Labour Party to be involved in the targeting and vilification of public sector workers in the way that it has been or for it to lend credence to those who wish to vilify public sector workers is utterly shameful.

Public sector workers have been hammered. I offer one stark example. With the Haddington Road agreement and the two hours extra or thereabouts that people must work for nothing, some workers, not too far from this Chamber, found when the two extra hours were added in and divided into their basic pay that they were getting paid less than the legal minimum wage.

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