Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the constructive comments from Deputies regarding public service pay priorities. We are open to engagement on these and other issues as part of the reform budgetary process. Working together, the Government and the Oireachtas need to decide what public service pay increases are affordable and sustainable on the basis of our economic growth and tax structure, with appropriate inputs from public servants and their staff representatives.

Pay restoration is a legitimate expectation of public servants, but there are many other legitimate expectations for increased Government expenditure. Housing must be balanced with health care, pensioners' needs with those of school children and public service remuneration with public service recruitment. Increases need to be sustainable not just for one budget, but on a multi-annual basis.

Risks to our economic growth and Government expenditure, including Brexit, lower EU growth rates and the result of an American election tonight, exist. These risks may be assimilated and planned for so that permanent expenditure commitments are not loaded onto an insecure base. Government expenditure needs to be targeted, proportionate and appropriate. We cannot let any one group in society appropriate all the benefits of the recovery.

It is in this context that this Government is committed to a collective approach to public service pay. Collective agreements deliver mutual benefits to the employer and the employee. They have served our country in the recent past and will continue to do so into the future. We value the work and commitment of our public servants, but we must ensure that any approach to pay restoration is within the parameters of what is available and affordable. This allows us to continue to improve services in the years ahead and to proceed along the path of using a strong economy to build a fairer society. This must be fair for everyone: those who work in our public services and those who depend on our public services.

We will work with the union interests to deliver an agreed pathway to sustainable pay restoration. The alternative is a series of disparate and costly wage deals that will undermine the economic progress that we have made and will not deliver the fairness required.

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