Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is the response I expected, because the Minister is not capable of producing a breakdown. That is why he will not produce a report. It would not hold up the legislation, because I specifically asked for the report to the published following the passage of the Bill in due course. He would have time to do that, and it would not interfere with this legislation.

The Minister of State is the first Minister to acknowledge that the cuts under the Haddington Road agreement were clear-cut for those earning more than €65,000 and for those with pensions in excess of €32,500. Given that he is boasting that these were simple, clear-cut, black-and-white changes, the Minister should be able to provide figures for the impact of the cuts on a vote-by-vote basis, but he is essentially saying that will not be done because the Minister will present an annual report. There is zero chance of that information being provided in this report. It will be a global public service report and there will no breakdown. If it is as simple as the Minister of State says to quantify the savings as a result of the different cuts, I would welcome that. I want to verify the Minister's statement, which he has repeated ad nauseam, that the Haddington Road agreement provides for €1 billion in savings. I do not believe that for a minute. It is similar to the flawed Estimates he issues every year. In an hour, we will be presented with Revised Estimates for 2015, which will be another set of false statements.

For those who do understand these technical Bills, the Minister of State's reply sounded good, but it is not relevant. He gave the impression that there would be a report on the FEMPI legislation. That is a simple report explaining why we need the FEMPI legislation and dealing with the sustainability of the national debt, the general government deficit and so on, but it does not address the savings under the Haddington Road agreement, as the Minister of State will be aware. It is a different report entirely, which will not give the savings I have sought on a vote-by-vote basis or even on a heading-by-heading basis. The Minister has studiously avoided dealing with this issue since the agreement was introduced. His bluff has eventually been called and I am sorry he is not present. He wittingly or unwittingly called his own bluff in the letter he issued to the Oireachtas committee to which I referred earlier on 15 December. I asked a series of questions and I was not happy with the reply. I met his officials following the vote last Thursday.

The Minister promised three times on the record of the House last Tuesday week to provide the information the following day. On Thursday morning, I spotted that he was to take the vote on the Supplementary Estimate in the Chamber. I rang his office and said that I had not received the information. He did not contact me, having promised it to the committee three times. I asked him to withhold the Supplementary Estimates until Tuesday of this week or until he had provided us with the information, and he refused to do that, saying that he had to publish the appropriation accounts. This all happened before the vote last Thursday, with the public unaware that there had been direct calls between me and his office. I then offered to take the Supplementary Estimate last Friday because the House was sitting, giving him another day to supply the information. I did not object to the content, but I wanted the information in the public interest. However, the Minister would not agree to take the Supplementary Estimate that day. The vote went ahead on Thursday. He asked a senior official, whom I was happy to talk to, to phone me. The official said they could not issue the information I was seeking because it would breach data protection rules, as it might be possible to identify some of the people based on their scales and the limited number of people retiring out of the 1,300 people mentioned. That was the first time this had been mentioned. The Minister, therefore, was not capable of supplying the information he had committed to providing on Tuesday. I said I would meet the official following the vote. I had no other option and that was one of the reasons I voted against the Supplementary Estimate. We were not happy with the choices that led to it anyway.

I met three officials from the Department and I agreed to narrow the scope of the query and have the information put in bands in order that there was no way people could be identified by Department, by category or by name. The information was supplied to the committee on 15 December. The Minister's bluff was eventually called. I had been asking him about the lump sum savings in respect of the pension levy, which the Minister of State says are laid out simply in black and white under the Haddington Road agreement for the public service in Vote 12. I asked for a breakdown and the Minister supplied a table to the committee. A total of 3,653 people in receipt of public service pensions were hit by the public service pension reduction, PSPR. Some of them were affected by a reduction under the original FEMPI legislation and the third FEMPI Act, both of which were implemented during our time in government, and then they suffered a further reduction under the fifth FEMPI Act, which relates to the Haddington Road agreement. I wanted to isolate the saving under FEMPI, which could not be simpler. The Minister, in reply to the committee earlier this week, stated:

Please note that a significant number of the payees involved were already paying PSPR prior to the implementation of FEMPI 5. These cases had their PSPR increased in line with the new relevant applicable deduction percentages. The FEMPI Act 2013 gave effect to the terms of the Haddington Road agreement. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform advises it is not possible to extract the portion of PSPR payable that relates directly to the increases in the PSPR in that Act.

The Minister, therefore, at long last told the committee that it is not possible, even in respect of that specific black-and-white item, to extract the portion of PSPR attributable to the Haddington Road agreement and the FEMPI Act 2013, yet he bandies about a figure of €1 billion in savings over three years How can he make up a figure when he cannot work out a basic, simple calculation? The Minister has been bluffing about the savings all along. He cannot provide them and he will not do so because they do not add up to €1 billion.

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