Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I will deal with the specific points made by the Deputy. For people who have not been involved in discussions on public sector pay, it is an extraordinarily complicated set of negotiations because one has so many unions and so many different agreements. Obviously, one must take a sectoral approach and such an approach has been taken with the key people from, for example, health in discussions with health representatives, be it from the Services Industrial, Professional and Technical Union, SIPTU, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, or others and likewise across each sector, including local government, the Civil Service, education and so on. There is a central co-ordination in all these discussions and needless to add, a lot of people are sitting around for a very long time who are not directly involved, in any given moment, in the overarching discussions. As I stated on Committee Stage, when one has senior representatives of both management and the workers in trade unions, it would be unusual if they did not take the opportunity to have bilateral discussions on outstanding or long-standing issues and that has happened. These bilateral discussions and agreements are not part of the overarching agreement and never in the past have been part of an overarching agreement.

The people who engaged in the bilateral discussions, in respect of which they reached an agreement, had that agreement validated by the then Labour Relations Commission, now the Workplace Relations Commission, through the creation of what are known as chairman's notes, which are separate from the overarching Haddington Road or Lansdowne Road agreements but form an integral part of good working relations at public sector level. Although those notes are not brought to my attention, the sectoral Ministers would be aware of the part of those notes which pertain to their areas of operation and information has been instanced in responses to parliamentary questions.

On the second issue raised by the Deputy regarding penalties, there is no intention of any penalties being introduced for anybody. It is my strong desire that all public sector workers be fully encompassed by the pay restoration mechanism set out in this agreement. It comes back to the point made by Deputy Seamus Healy that in any negotiation between management and trade unions, there is give and take on both sides. Management on this side, namely, the State, has to be mindful of what the State can afford. The cost of full restoration of all elements of FEMPI is, as I have indicated to the House previously, approximately €2.2 billion. We could not find €2.2 billion in 2016 without impacting enormously on other services or breaching the legal basis in which we are now obliged to anchor our fiscal policy, namely, the Stability and Growth Pact. Neither option was desirable or wise and so we did not do that.

As I said, following serious negotiations, during which there was much toing and froing, in terms of discussion, a deal was cut. That deal was then brought back to the trade unions. The public services committee of congress is the recognised body to validate or reject an agreement and it endorsed this agreement. The majority of public servants, represented by trade unions, endorsed the agreement. This legislation, which I am asking the House to endorse, follows on from public servants' endorsement of the agreement. What we are doing by way of this legislation is endorsing the negotiated agreed position with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions through the public services committee of congress.

In regard to what happens to persons who or unions which want to exclude themselves from the agreement, I am not leveraging anybody into this, although I hope everybody will sign up to it. We cannot have a situation whereby people would take on only the benefits and none of the liabilities of it in terms of ask by the management side. That would not be fair to those who are carrying the burden. I am sure the trade union movement as a whole would be very miffed if anybody who is not part of congress were to benefit from full pay restoration and whatever else is on offer but not subject to any of the other requirements of the agreement. That is not the way solemn overarching agreements work. That is not the way collective negotiations operate. When collective agreement, based on majority support, is reached, everybody is bound by it. It cannot be the case that some are bound by it and others are not and can go their own way. If someone excludes himself or herself from it, then he or she is excluded. That is something over which we have no control. It is not possible to cherry-pick.

As I have already indicated to the trade unions which have rejected by vote the Lansdowne Road agreement, I am happy for my officials to sit down with them and bring them through the consequences in detail. I make that offer again today to all trade unions. One of the trade unions representing teachers is protesting outside Leinster House today. The teachers have negotiated a particularly strong deal in relation to this agreement. While the INTO, which is the biggest teacher trade union, has endorsed this agreement, the TUI has not. There are two elements to that. Again, I am happy for my officials to sit down with the TUI and go through its concerns. The higher paid TUI members might be concerned about the speed with which the top level pay is being restored. We have structured this so that initial benefits go to low and middle income workers. That is how it should be. I understand that one of the concerns of the TUI is the speed of abolition of the pension reduction. It is concerned that the pension reduction over the next three years will affect only 80% of workers, presumably, because some of its members are on pensions greater than €35,000 per annum and it would like the pension reduction applied to them restored more quickly.

We have deliberately focused this on low and middle income earners and low and middle income pensioners in the first instance. There will be full restoration over time. I would ask that trade unions which have concerns about this sit down with my officials who will go through it in some detail.

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