Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Let us be clear. I want to see pay restoration and a hell of a lot more of it. I was talking to some of the service officers in here and they are nearly crying as a result of some of the pay levels they have to put up with. They need this pay. What I do not like, which was implicit in what the Minister said, is that it is essentially one or the other - it is services that are cash starved or it is pay. We do not accept that. We want the details, which the Minister would expect of us, as Deputy Cullinane said. It is not just hypothetical. We have been laughed at and ridiculed by the Minister when we put forward other tax revenue-raising proposals. He said they was nonsense, that he wanted costings and that they would destroy the economy and so on. The Minister insists on detail and he is not prepared to provide any such detail. As a result, we are concerned that this is a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Minister has an obligation to tell us from where the money is coming.

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