Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The reality is that the Minister uses the threat of the legislation to bully public sector workers, including nurses, teachers and local authority workers, into accepting the Haddington Road agreement against their will. In the first instance, it is quite a scandal that the Minister casts himself as a William Martin Murphy-type figure 100 years after the great Lock-out of 1913 with this type of blackmail threat.

In the event that the secondary schoolteachers organised in the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland reject the proposals or manifestations of austerity the Government is attempting to impose on them, what will be the role of the Minister and the legislation?

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