Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No. On the contrary, the Deputy is fundamentally wrong. The whole focus of Lansdowne Road agreement was to concentrate pay restoration initially on the lowest paid. If one considers what has happened with the unions, that is the reason the recommendations for acceptance have come largely from the lower paid. The ones that are resisting, such as the Association of Higher Civil and public Servants and the association representing doctors, feel that pay restoration is not quick enough for the higher paid and that is their complaint. Therefore, the Deputy is quite wrong. We have to understand what FEMPI is. The Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Acts amounts to an emergency measure to cut pay. We have to restore that because although I laid a report before the House on 29 June in regard to the need for the FEMPI legislation to continue as the economy recovers, and thankfully that recovery is continuing and please God it will continue, there will be a case to be made that the FEMPI legislation should fall and we need to have an orderly unwinding of that.

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