Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Bill 2014 proposes to amend previous FEMPI legislation to restore on a partial and phased basis, the reductions made to public sector pay and pensions since 2009. This Bill gives effect to pay restoration measures agreed under the Landsdowne Road agreement on 29 May 2015.

According to its Long Title, the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2013 provided for the reduction of the remuneration of certain public servants, including members of the Judiciary, a reduction of the amount of the payment of pension or other benefits, other than lump sums, payable to or in respect of certain persons who are or were in the public service under an occupational pension scheme or pension arrangement and the alteration of the operation of scales of pay for public servants, including the suspension of the awarding, for a certain period, of increments under those scales, as well as providing for related matters.

The Act placed a freeze on increments for public servants on incremental pay scales commencing in July 2013. It allowed for modification of the increment freeze, as agreed under the Haddington Road agreement, such that increments were delayed for short periods. Under section 4 of the Bill before us, the increment freeze under the 2013 Act will be extended to July 2018 consistent with the extension of the Haddington Road agreement by the terms of that particular agreement.

As a consequence of the emergency measures, Irish people have shouldered a disproportionate amount of the burden created by a reckless financial sector and the subsequent collapse in incomes and property prices. Many public servants had their pay and conditions changed repeatedly under the terms of the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation. One hears a plethora of stories concerning the hardship endured by public servants across the board, for example, teachers and gardaí.

New entrants to the Garda and newly qualified teachers are barely able to make ends meet. This is particularly relevant in light of spiralling rents in Dublin and elsewhere. Poor rates of pay are forcing new Garda recruits and teaching graduates out of their local communities and ever further from their places of work. The Government removed the annual rent allowance of €4,115 from gardaí graduating from Templemore who will be paid only €23,171 in their first year of service. New recruits will struggle to exist on such a basic wage and will find it difficult to secure accommodation near the station to which they have been posted, especially in cities and large urban areas. The Government should follow the lead of the authorities in London and Paris which provide central accommodation for essential workers such as police officers, firefighters and nurses. Gardaí who do a ten-hour shift may have to drive two hours each way to and from work. This will cause fatigue and could mean they are unable to perform their duties in a satisfactory manner.

The first batch of Garda recruits to be affected by the cut in the rent allowance have completed training and are being posted to stations nationwide. The approximately 200 gardaí who were recently deployed face soaring rents and a rising housing market that are pricing some of these essential workers out of their communities. If a decent and fair wage is not established soon, new gardaí will be caught in a poverty trap and key workers will be excluded from the communities they serve. While Ireland would not be the first country to encounter this problem, we should learn from other jurisdictions where it has arisen by avoiding it at all costs. It is discriminatory, to say the least, that new recruits are being treated differently from other gardaí and that different wage structures will apply to them. It is also wrong for us to expect gardaí to put their lives on the line, as they do daily, in such circumstances. Unequal pay structures make matters worse.

The rent supplement for gardaí was introduced not as a housing supplement but to ensure police officers had a living wage. A living wage is the minimum we can strive to achieve for gardaí. The current anomalies must be addressed as soon as possible.

Newly qualified teachers will be paid €1,538 less than teachers who qualified last year as a result of the review of allowances under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act. New entrants to teaching are also losing the qualification allowance, which is worth approximately €5,000 per annum. To provide partial compensation for this measure, they will now start at the fourth rather than the first point on the payscale, which translates to a starting salary of approximately €30,700, plus an additional €1,592 for those who sign up for supervision and substitution duties, giving a total of €32,292. To qualify for the supervision and substitution allowance, new entrants will have to provide 12 additional per hours per annum over and above the existing requirement. They will also lose the Gaeltacht, island and teaching through Irish allowances, three allowances with which the Minister of State, Deputy McHugh, will be acquainted. These are worth €3,063, €1,842 and €1,583, respectively.

All of us are aware that people enter the public service from a sense of civic duty as opposed to the pay on offer. The cuts made under the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation have made it very difficult to attract young graduates, many of whom are drawn to professions that provide a living wage, career prospects and job security for themselves and their families. A further side effect of the cuts has been the haemorrhaging of Irish doctors and nurses to foreign shores in search of better terms and conditions for difficult and highly skilled work.

The majority of trade unions voted to accept the Lansdowne Road agreement, which proposes the restoration of pay and pensions and the resumption of hiring to fill vacant posts. However, the agreement did not gain universal acceptance with a number of unions voting to reject it.

The financial crisis has placed a heavy burden on citizens. The number of people working in the public service has declined by 30,000 in recent years. I give credit and thanks to public servants for their hard work across the public sector in striving to keep Ireland moving through tough times. I hope the unwinding of the FEMPI measures will give them their extended families some extra money.

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