Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The reality, as Deputy Kelleher knows, is that our election manifesto in 2011 was quite clear. This Bill is welcome. I speak as a public servant who has spent all of his life teaching and being involved in a voluntary capacity with organisations dealing with disability. I fully understand the role played by public sector workers and their families in our communities as we as a country rose above the economic catastrophe that befell us.

This debate is about pay restoration, and that is why it is important to acknowledge and thank our public servants. They are the men and women who have had to endure two and, in some cases, three pay cuts. We must acknowledge the sacrifice they and their families have made as they assisted the Government in bringing the country back from the brink. That required a gargantuan effort by the people, but the Government has had a plan to fix our economy.

We may be the fastest-growing economy in Europe, which makes for wonderful reading and a great banner headline, but we must now ensure that translates into the lives of every citizen, no matter where they are from. They should feel the benefit of our economic recovery.

There is a narrative espoused by certain commentators about the public service. I remind such people that public servants are the men and women of our Defence Forces, Garda Síochána, nurses, teachers and first responders, to name just some. They are also the men and women who work in the Houses of the Oireachtas and provide a valuable service to the nation. When people are in trouble, they look for help from those working in community welfare offices, which provide a last refuge or first port of call for many of our citizens.

When I hear members of the Fourth Estate pouring scorn and derision on our public servants, I often ask myself whether they know about whom they are writing or talking. The great mantra is that public servants have permanent and pensionable jobs. I ask the people who write in our newspapers and commentators whether they would do the work of a garda at 3 a.m., a first responder to an accident or a nurse working in an ICU ward.

The Bill before us is symbolic in that it reflects how we as a nation have come on a journey. As the Minister, Deputy Howlin, said, it is about arising from the fiscal emergency to support middle and low-income earners. That is why it is important. I appeal to the ASTI, in particular, to reconsider its decision on pay talks. It has a duty to reballot its members in the context of a larger number who may vote in a future ballot.

I am acutely aware of the major imposition of the past ten years on many workers, be they in the private or public sector. People have lost their jobs, had their livelihoods decimated and their quality of life severely damaged. Thankfully, we are beginning to emerge into a better place as a country. It is important that we recognise that the future is about quality of life, balancing the pay recovery and sustaining and improving our public finances, which offers us an opportunity to bring about reform in how we as a country do our business.

Deputy Kelleher and I are members of the Joint Committee on Health and Children. I wish to focus on health. We have seen progress in areas such as the national children's hospital, how we treat patients and carry out procedures, Healthy Ireland and the introduction of free GP care for those aged under six and over 70 years. They are just some of the measures about which I want to speak.

Deputy Kelleher and I may have a difference of opinion on how we achieve what we want to achieve in health, but we all want to see a health system that is based upon the medical needs of patients, rather than their what is in their pockets. We need to take time to arrive at a universal health service. Unfortunately, the health system is not like a car. If it breaks down one cannot bring it to a garage, put it up on a ramp and give it a service.

The health system is demand-led and people-centred, and cannot be stopped and overhauled. Changes have to be carried out incrementally. We have succeeded in increasing the health budget and have seen greater investment in information technology, which I hope will see projects like e-referrals proceeding, waiting lists being put online and the issuing of the first individual health identifier.

It is important that we examine how hospital groups can bring profound and real change to the delivery of our health care model. Equally, it is important that we acknowledge that the journey for our health system will continue, in particular in the area of primary care.

New primary care units have opened. A societal change is required in our attitude towards what is seen as the first port of call, namely, emergency departments. As Chairman of the Joint Committee on Health and Children I have become a major proponent of the need for primary care as an alternative to accessing hospitals as a first port of call. Work is done in hospitals which can be done in primary care units, and such work should be expedited and prioritised.

Today we have signs of progress in the Oireachtas, with this Bill in the Dáil and, in the Seanad, the final legislative programme piece on the road to marriage equality. This morning the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children engaged in pre-legislative scrutiny of the adoption (tracing and information) Bill, which will give those who require information that has been denied them for so long the opportunity to obtain it. Reform is taking place and change is happening in Ireland. We are trying to make Ireland a better place, cast aside the darkness of the past, deal with the legacy issues and allow people to flourish and become the best they can be.

I often wonder about some of the people opposite - not Deputy Kelleher, I have to say - who engage in absolute populism. This week I was on local radio with a particular person who was populist, to say the least, who had no policy or alternative but opposed everything and gave a message that everything could be better in a faraway place. Populism does not create policy, fix the economy or lend itself to creating jobs, and it certainly did not challenge the economic uncertainties that we had. Has the Government achieved everything we wanted to achieve? Of course we have not. Have we made mistakes? Yes we have, but the important point is that we are trying and have succeeded in creating employment, fixing the economy and offering hope to people. That is what the Bill is about: offering hope for the future.

The plan now must be to use the increasing resources we receive to benefit those who most need them, whether in the area of disability, and autism in particular, or in any other area. I hope the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, and the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, will look at the area of autism and how we can provide services for those children and adults who require them. We must look at this in the long term with regard to how we can prepare for those school leavers who will come into society with a real need. There is also the area of public health, particularly the Healthy Ireland initiative, and how we can promote a different type of health system and a way of looking at the whole aspect of health in the context of obesity, smoking and the sale of alcohol Bill, which is to be a priority before we go to the country for an election. If I may digress for a second, Laverne McGuinness, the deputy director general of the HSE, is to leave her post, and on the floor of the Chamber I acknowledge her contribution and commitment to public service and I thank her. She is a person of great experience and commitment who will be missed in the HSE, and I thank her for her commitment and service.

In his remarks Deputy Kelleher made reference to the banks, and I must say I agree with much of what he said. We saw the banks being given very generous assistance by the Irish people. They now have an obligation to work with people to keep them in their homes, lend to business and create employment. We must look at the issue of the banks in terms of how they engage with people. I very much echo Deputy Kelleher's serious call for them to stop dealing with some people in a particular way. There are some people who do not engage with the banks, and we cannot condone this, but those who do and make a decent effort to meet the banks' requirements should not be forced into court or be forced to do anything under duress or with fear. It is important that the banks recognise this. We have made huge sacrifices as a people, and now the banks we assisted have an obligation and duty to work with people.

When we meet the banks they often tell us about their great figures, and sometimes their figures do not add up to reality. Every day all of us meet people in our constituency offices and clinics who have issues with overdrafts being reduced. I met a small business person who was told the other day that his overdraft was being stopped for no apparent reason. Every week we meet people in our offices who have issues with how they can work with the banks to repay their mortgages. It is important that the banks work with all of us to ensure we keep people in their homes and, in particular, to see how they can assist the construction sector and work with people to provide capital where we need to build private and social housing.

As a positive, we as a country have been creating 1,300 jobs a week in 2015. Since the Action Plan for Jobs came into being, 125,000 jobs have been created. Our unemployment rate has decreased to 9.5% from a height in 2012 of 15.1%. These people are back at work. If one travels the roads of Cork city one sees queues of people going to work in the morning in the industrial park at the end of Curraheen Road and City Gate in Mahon, and one sees the investment in One Albert Quay in the city. There is a tailback of traffic down to the harbour with people going to work in the pharmaceutical industry. People are being employed and jobs are being created. What we must do now is ensure that the jobs that are being created are sustainable and that we allow people to have a quality of life commensurate with what they do.

Last week, the budget reduced the contribution that people will pay in the form of the universal social charge, and we all very much welcome this. We have seen the minimum wage increase twice under the Government. It is about people being at work, a value and a job. The past eight years have been painful, stressful and deeply difficult for our people but they have, with the Government, risen to the task, which is why it is important to acknowledge the Bill today.

I will make reference to another issue. Today we as a country are finally passing the Marriage Bill in the Seanad, and it is imperative that we celebrate this great achievement. Next year we will celebrate the anniversary of our Rising. We are a very beloved people throughout the world. Today, our President is in the United States meeting various interest groups celebrating the Irishness and uniqueness that we bring to the world.

In passing this legislation, it is important that we recognise the role and work done by our public servants. It is not about pitting private against public; it is about recognising the work all of us in society do that contributes to a better and more equal Ireland. Our economic recovery means we will have more money at our disposal, and this money must be used to ensure the recovery is sustainable for the next generation, that we never have to go back to the days of the past and that we never have to see the type of auction politics engaged in previously. It is about ensuring there is clarity in the run-up to the next election and that those on the far side of the House recognise that there is a better way of doing government, which is the way the Government has done it over the past four and a half years in putting our people first. Sometimes Sinn Féin really baffles me with its voodoo economics, because if we look at their policy regarding public sector pay, it really is all over the place. In Stormont in 2012 it implemented a two-year pay freeze for 12,000 civil servants earning more than £21,000, which equates to approximately €24,000. It also cut 22,000 jobs this year in the North.

It tried to capitalise on the Haddington Road agreement process here by opposing it. What is its policy? As the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, stated recently, the party wants to recruit 250 hospital consultants on less pay. The difficulty we have in recruiting staff for the health system is that we must ensure we can retain them on levels of pay that will not force them to go abroad.

I welcome the Bill and I am delighted I had the opportunity to speak on it. I speak as a public servant and I am very proud of what our men and women do in the public service. I know this is a step on the road to recovery. Like Deputy Kelleher, I will mention our banks, which must again begin to work with people. I should not name banks, I suppose, but we know the AIB advertisement to the effect that it is working with people. Let us see the banks working in collaboration with people so we can bring about a better and more prosperous country, where we can all live in our own homes or houses provided by the State. That is the next step in the Construction 2020 project, which we need to see expedited as well.

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