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

I am sure the Minister is not asserting that, if we want quality people working throughout the system, the only place there is a need for what he calls quality is at the top of the tree.

I am sure he will acknowledge that quality, ability and the capacity to live a decent basic lifestyle is something he wishes to afford to all public and civil servants. I have said this to him previously when we have debated these matters and I readily concede that all of this has become something of a mantra of mine and others in recent years. With all the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest, FEMPI, legislation, changes and reform that he claims have been introduced, the central disparity within the system - in which small numbers of people are overpaid and over-pensioned but as one moves down the chain people are on poverty wages, and we talk about the working poor but these are the working poor in the employment of the State - and the failure even to acknowledge that is quite astonishing.

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