Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I will make two appeals, one of which is to David Begg. There has been much discussion and praise of David Begg's integrity and of how good a man he has been over the past number of years. I was a young trade union activist in the CWU in the 1980s when David Begg became general secretary of that union. I remember being at the conference at which his taking of the job or otherwise was being debated. David Begg made two very good points. He said that if one pays peanuts, one gets monkeys and, as a result, he sought a good wage, which was fair enough. He also stated he would not accept a job in which he did not have a lifelong expectancy to have that job.

The rules were, therefore, changed at our conference to allow that to happen. I did not agree with it at the time. People should have to put themselves forward before the membership or before the people, as we do, to get re-elected. David Begg secured that change.

We were in a job where every job was secure and every job was pensionable. Within approximately six years of David Begg's appointment, we have come to a point where men and women are waiting on a telephone call at 6 a.m. to find out if they will be called into work that day. This was started by the general secretary of the Communications Workers' Union at the time. We had a situation where there was equal pay for work of equal value. We now have a situation where people in my grade - the post office clerk's grade - have two different wages. There is one wage for younger people who came into the job in the past ten years and there is a different wage, that is, the one I was on as a public sector worker, for others. This cuts across the whole idea of equal pay for work of equal value. We were brought into social partnership but social partnership has brought us to where we are today. I appeal to David Begg to stand down and to do what people expect of him.

David Begg said he was not in it for the money and that it was only a paltry €20,000. A living wage of €11.50 per hour would bring in €24,000 a year. David Begg calls the money people must live on paltry. It is pocket money for him. He should step down. He should say he will not accept this job. Any Member in this House on the Government's side that votes as having confidence in the Tánaiste is buying into the maintenance and continuance of cronyism in this country.

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