Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Some of the victims of the FEMPI legislation are sitting in the Visitors Gallery today, newly qualified teachers, young teachers and local authority workers who have been crucified with this emergency legislation first brought in by Fianna Fáil and the Green Party and continued by Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

The Minister has not answered the key question. Is there still an emergency? If there is not an emergency how can he possibly justify continuing to punish these workers? All of the things the Minister mentions, the instability and all the rest, were the fault of these young teachers or nurses or gardaí or local authority workers but they have suffered cruelly as a result. Even at the end of the Lansdowne Road agreement process they will be earning less than they were earning in 2009. Many of the conditions they lost are not even mentioned in the Lansdowne Road agreement.

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