Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On amendments Nos. 2 to 6, inclusive, in the name of Deputy Mary Lou McDonald, amendment No. 2 would, simpliciter, prevent the pay cuts being restored to any public servant earning more than €65,000. The following amendment is a tautology and redundant, because if the cut is not being restored to anybody on over €65,000 it will not be paid to anybody on a salary of over €100,000. That person is obviously captured by the amendment that provides there would be no pay restoration for anybody on over €65,000.

Sinn Féin's position is that not a cent will be restored to anybody on a salary above €65,000, although proportionately these are the people who contributed most to the rebalancing in the crisis. Uniquely, they were subject to three pay cuts. People on salaries below €65,000 were subject to two pay cuts. Notwithstanding these people were hit for a third time, the amendment provides that they are not to get a cent more under Sinn Féin's proposals. Who are we talking about in this regard? We are talking about principals and deputy principals in primary schools, about directors of nursing in our hospitals, anybody above the rank of superintendent in An Garda Síochána and a range of other people, including every doctor in our hospitals, notwithstanding we made significant reductions in their pay. According to the ESRI report, only two countries made more significant reductions in pay during the crisis than we did.

Sinn Féin's position is that nobody on a salary of over €65,000 should get a cent back. Therefore, the whole concept of this legislation providing for an emergency situation is lost on Deputy McDonald. This legislation cannot exist outside of an emergency. We have no basis to cut people's pay other than there being an emergency.

The whole idea of opening negotiations with the public sector unions this year was to ensure we had an orderly unwinding of FEMPI. I can be absolutely certain that if I accepted the course of action recommended by Sinn Féin, many people who are in receipt of remuneration in excess of €65,000 in the public service, some of whom are nurse managers, doctors, administrators, principals or deputy principals in primary or secondary schools, or their union on their behalf, would take legal action and this entire edifice would collapse at a cost, as I explained on Committee Stage, of €2.3 billion. I opened discussions with the public sector unions and we negotiated an agreement which is now being endorsed by the public sector committee of Congress and supported by the majority of public servants. I want to be very clear, the legislation is intended to give effect to a negotiated agreement, the Lansdowne Road agreement.

Amendments such as those we are discussing which seek to alter the terms would be in breach of that negotiated, agreed and voted upon agreement. I am not prepared to break my word and the word of this Government on a solemn agreement reached through collective discussions and negotiations with the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. I do not know whether the Deputy opposite has no regard for the public sector committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions but if I sit down and negotiate a position and ask them to vote on it and if they bring their members along and explain it and carry it we are obligated to deliver on it. As I have said, specifically amendment No. 2 would delete the provision to give me any capacity to increase the salaries of public servants on salaries above €65,000.

Apart from the commitments given in the Haddington Road and Lansdowne Road agreements, it is important that the public service is able to compete for talent. We have had this discussion. The notion that nobody in the public service, in essence, should earn more than €65,000 - it used to be €100,000 but now it seems to be a new figure that the Deputy has invented - means that we will not have quality public services. We have had debates on other matters but I believe as a trade unionist all my life, and my family and my father before me, there is a suitable and an appropriate rate for the job and the notion that we can arbitrarily cut people's salaries outside the context of an emergency is quite wrong. We need to negotiate these issues with the representatives of our workers and we need to deliver on what is negotiated.

The Haddington Road agreement negotiated pay cuts. They were progressive from 5.5% to 10% with increasing remuneration bands for those who were in receipt of in excess of €65,000. I made the decision as a Minister and I imposed no pay cut in my time on anybody below €65,000. I thought that was a reasonable and fair position to adopt. I want to ensure that restoration happens. There are a couple of continuing inaccuracies which I would like to correct. I thought I had corrected this on Committee Stage. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald has said that the only people who are getting full restoration are people in receipt of more than €65,000, and others are not. That is not the case. The full restoration applies only to the third round of cuts - that is what is profiled - which only applied to those over €65,000 but that element of their pay that is below €65,000 is treated exactly as for everybody else. That is something we need to be clear about.

In relation to Deputy Sean Fleming's point and the parliamentary question response of yesterday. In each of the agreements we have had to date, when we cut people's pay from the very beginning of the FEMPI legislation, there is what we call a grace period. In other words, that people who retired during the grace period, although their actual pay had been reduced by FEMPI, their pension was calculated on the pre-cut level. That is the way it was negotiated. That was negotiated as part of the Lansdowne Road agreement which was concluded in May 2015. Section 5(4) of the agreement states that the Government has indicated that it intends to provide in the legislation for a grace period consistent with the terms of this agreement during which both the reduction in pay and any deferred increment the progression provided for under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act will be disregarded. The grace period has been a continuing and enduring element of the FEMPI legislation. There was much lobbying from all trade unions to ensure that grace period. Of course, everybody benefits equally from it. In relation to the pay side, the grace period or any other aspect of it, I have not disregarded anybody's individual rights because I have said that part of the structure and architecture of FEMPI is that it has broad and uniform application and it does not single out individuals for unique treatment.

The effect of the grace period was to allow pension benefits to be calculated on the rates of pay in effect before 1 July 2013 in this case. Pensions and equivalent PSPR contributions will be based on the earlier pay rates. That has been an essential element of the structure of FEMPI from the very beginning. I hope that answers the Deputies' questions.

In regard to the issue of Members of the Oireachtas or office holders, I have been clear from the beginning in answering questions. I know there might be some political capital in saying that Deputies or Senators should not get anything back. I do not believe that we should disaggregate Deputies or Senators from the generality of pay. They are in a pay slot analogous to principal officers in the public service and they should not be disaggregated from that. They should get the restoration on the same basis as everybody else, not slower and not quicker than anybody else. If one was to go down the road of making a unique set of circumstances for Members of the Oireachtas there would be pressure never to give an increase. We would get back to the situation where only those who are privately wealthy would be Members or, of course, the miraculous situation of Sinn Féin Members who all live on the average industrial wage but with an extraordinary lifestyle. I do not know how they manage it. Perhaps they should give lectures on it. It is an area into which I will not go.

We also need to construct the architecture of FEMPI in the broad way I have described in order for it to be robust against constitutional challenge. We cannot start to pick individual categories of workers and say they must be treated separately and uniquely. One might say nobody is going to challenge it from the Oireachtas: maybe so. The legal advice we have is that the criterion for the maintenance of FEMPI is, first, to argue always that the emergency continues to exist and we need to be able to commence the course that this is an orderly wind down over time, consistent with the orderly removal of the recession and the pressures on the Exchequer; second, that the provisions have general application and are not confined to one narrow category of individual; and third that the measures actually make a contribution to national recovery. I think the Deputy is right, those of us who have been at the helm during this most difficult journey for the State from complete crisis when we came into government in 2011 to the path of recovery and have asked the people of Ireland to come with us on this dangerous path should give an example. The Government at its first meeting, when I presented the Lansdowne Road agreement to it, specifically determined that the members of the Government, our political advisers and the Ministers of State who hold office in this Government will not avail of any of the restoration set out in this legislation.

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