Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

-----the pay of public sector workers by a huge amount. Year on year for five years, over 230,000 public sector workers who earn less than €60,000 a year, with the vast majority earning less than €40,000 a year, have lost €27,000. That is a huge cut and a huge loss to those public sector workers in order to bail out the banks. When those of us in this House are discussing pay and pay increases, we should remind ourselves of the money we, the Taoiseach and other Ministers earn. We should think about how we compare, and how we look to others.

I want to make special mention of nurses because in any hospital today, three nurses working alongside each other doing the same job could be on three different rates of pay.

Imagine how they feel and how demoralised, annoyed and seriously angry they are with this State. They must then deal with a creaking health service that cannot even deliver sufficient beds to the population. Moreover, the Government cannot even get the nurses who qualify here to stay in Ireland, as 5,500 out of 7,000 of them have emigrated in recent years. In addition, the Government had a failed campaign to bring them back home that did nothing to alleviate that problem. They will continue to emigrate for logical reasons because they cannot afford to rent or to buy in any of the cities and find it extremely difficult to rear their families. How does the Taoiseach perceive the Government's policy on public sector pay can continue in this vein without serious consideration being given to repealing the FEMPI legislation, which goes to the heart of all these issues?

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