Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is very important that this debate takes place and that everybody who has spoken here today has paid tribute to the tremendous and essential work of the public services. My wife is a nurse and the work she does and is expected to do is incredible and, at times, unbearable, particularly if there is a problem and somebody on the night shift is sick. Somebody on the day shift then has to stay there. This happens regularly in nursing and that is only one example. There are many other examples of the supreme sacrifices people make because if our public servants, especially those in front-line, essential services, did not do what they do, many other people would suffer.

Public servants have suffered hugely in terms of their pay since 2009. Those cuts were brought in with the highest paid public servants taking the biggest percentage cut. This is a fact. The contribution the public servants have made has been astronomical and has played a key role in keeping this State on track. That must be remembered forever more because they have made a contribution above and beyond pretty much everybody except for those who lost their jobs, who paid the ultimate price. Thankfully, many of them are again working.

The mantra "repeal FEMPI" is going around at the moment. I would rather unwind FEMPI because if we simply repealed it, we would face a €2 billion-odd bill. What is more, the disproportionate benefit would to be to the higher paid public servants because they took bigger cuts, so we would be giving a massive boost to higher paid public servants. The idea of repealing FEMPI is not a refined idea and I urge those who use this slogan to think about it. We need to plan it properly to ensure the people who benefit from any unwinding of it are the lower to middle income workers, the newly qualified and new entrants to the public sector. This has been highlighted most vociferously in recent weeks and months by the teachers, particularly young teachers. Their unions have been on board but the young teachers have driven it massively and have driven it on behalf of An Garda Síochána and other young public servants. It just so happens that teachers were recruited throughout the crisis while people were not recruited in many other areas. We want to see the unwinding of it in a orderly process that protects the State, looks for equality for new entrants to the public sector and targets low and middle-income workers.

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