Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise in advance that I must leave the Chamber directly after speaking as I have another engagement.

As we are discussing the roles of public servants, I believe every Member will join me in sending our sympathy to the families and community of Dallas after the appalling tragedy this morning. I include all the victims of gun violence in the past few days in the United States in that sentiment. However, public servants working on the front line have once again paid the ultimate price.

The Fianna Fáil Party supports the gradual, negotiated unwinding of FEMPI as both a public policy and a legal imperative. Public servants, through FEMPI and the changes and practices in productivity since 2008, have contributed €2.2 billion per annum to the recovery of this State. This was at huge personal cost to them and their families and they deserve to be recognised for that contribution and for shoring up the public finances during an intensely difficult period for the State.

In the first instance, the Fianna Fáil Party wants to see the Lansdowne Road agreement public pay agreement fully implemented up to its September 2018 completion date. We also want to see the urgent establishment of a public pay commission as agreed in the facilitation document which allows this Government to do its business. The commission should provide a clear forum to deal with broader public sector pay claims and it should lay the ground work for a replacement to Lansdowne Road agreement and the full repeal of the FEMPI Act and its provisions.

We believe the following principles should be used in future pay negotiations. First, there is a need to improve public sector employees’ take home pay. The central issue is the level of take home pay for all taxpayers and not just for public servants. Improvements for public sector workers can be achieved through changes to pay levels, the pension levy, universal social charge, PRSI and PAYE taxes, or a combination of these. The commission must ensure there is a mix of measures to deliver a take home pay bonus for public servants.

Second, the commission should acknowledge the importance of public sector pay to the public finances and the contribution made to date by all public servants across so many genres. The third principle should be a particular focus on restoring the take home pay of low and middle income earners. Increases should be targeted progressively on low and middle income earners to begin with. The fourth principle involves reforming the pension levy while consistently favouring those on low and middle incomes. For them to achieve the greatest benefit of the reform of the levy, it should be done on a targeted basis.

With regard to the fifth principle, I welcome the Minister's announcement last Wednesday on the equality of treatment for newly recruited staff. Teachers, nurses and health professionals across the system who were recruited since 2012 do not have the same conditions or the same access to conditions afforded to those who were employed before that. However, we expect them to do the same job. For example, this week many teachers, who are thought to be on holidays, are actually attending courses all over the State. They are upgrading their skills and knowledge to deliver an ever changing curriculum, ensuring our education system contributes to Ireland being at the forefront of the world economy. We are asking our nurses, radiographers and health professionals to take on new technologies and new drugs, but the manner in which they are being encouraged to take on new education has been absolutely removed under the differences in treatment for newly recruited staff. We need to ensure that all our staff are treated equally and are given the same encouragement to upskill. This needs to be done in the knowledge that we are losing so many of our trained people to other countries and economies. Having learned their skills in Ireland, we need to allow them to have the choice, if they wish, to remain at home and use their skills here in health, education and in other sectors that need those kinds of services.

We require an external body to independently verify the costs contained in any new agreement and the achievement of targets included in it. That is good practice and should be achieved across many areas.

We also want to see public sector pensioners given proper and fair treatment. Until now they were not considered in any agreement because the agreement automatically impinged on them. However, under FEMPI, they were hit with pay reductions. Now that there is an amalgamation of public sector pensioner organisations, a way should be found to hear their views during the negotiation as opposed to after, and to represent those views around the table before the agreement is made.

There has been enormous progress in public sector reform over the past few years. The work done by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in driving that on is to be welcomed and encouraged. We need to ensure that best practice is shared across the public sector and that the silo way of governing is finally taken down for once and for all in an ambitious programme that will eventually benefit all citizens.

Finally, there is the ongoing issue of the restoration of front-line services, all of which have taken substantial cuts in their budgets recently and which are directly linked to how we unwind FEMPI. If we decide to take FEMPI out overnight, the budgets available for front-line services, for the capital programme and to ensure we have a recovery and an economy that is going somewhere will be absolutely destroyed. We will not have an economic recovery that allows us to realise this country's potential. That does not mean we should long-finger taking FEMPI out. It should go into a process and we should set targets that people can see are being measured and reached. The public service needs to have an idea that FEMPI is coming to an end but we need to know it is being done in a measured way. We will continue to work with the Minister on that, where possible, and will continue to call him out on if there are unnecessary delays.

I would like to see details of the process for new teachers and to see a similar process get under way for health care workers and other workers, particularly newly recruited staff who are affected. An overnight repeal of FEMPI, which would cost between €1.8 billion and €2.2 billion, is unsustainable, but putting it on the long finger will not suffice to build confidence and morale in a service that has been hit not just by pay cuts but by so many other issues in recent years. All public servants deliver massive services every day and massive sacrifices in the face of an ever-increasing challenge. It is time to call time on FEMPI, but we must do so in a manner that does not create the conditions that necessitated its creation.

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