Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister made the point earlier that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions made it very clear that there are two points it wants to deal with. The first is the acceleration of negotiations on pay restoration. That comes on foot of the Labour Court award to the Garda. Nearly everybody now takes the view, although the Government is not saying it, that the Lansdowne Road agreement is unsustainable. It will simply not hold at a time when public sector workers see another group of workers gain a pay increase following a Labour Court recommendation. The former group of workers has gone through the same austerity and the same situation and now they find themselves falling behind another group of workers. That is not acceptable. I do not think those workers will accept it because it is not on. Should the Government now accept the inevitable and set the date for proper talks with the public sector unions? The talks at the moment appear to be tentative. Does the Minister agree that along with a shorter timetable for full pay restoration for workers earning less than €65,000 a year, the question of equal pay, which has already been raised, should be dealt with as an urgent and immediate issue?

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