Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy heard me say in previous replies, I believe the Lansdowne Road agreement will be a central element to how we manage public pay in 2017 and 2018. With all of the understandable focus on the current challenges in public service pay, we should not lose sight of the fact that more than 20 unions have signed up to the Lansdowne Road agreement. More than 200,000 public and civil servants are inside it. That is the very reason I take this issue so seriously and why I am engaging with the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. I am doing so because I believe strongly a collective approach to how we manage public pay is an essential element of how a small open economy such as Ireland will be able to respond to the volatility we see and the type of challenge to which Deputy Tommy P. Broughan referred earlier.

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