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

Once again, the divisive and dishonest campaign to pit public sector workers against private sectors is under way, this time in the form of the review on public sector pay by the hand-picked group which recently published its report on this issue, thus perpetuating this utterly divisive narrative. I wonder whether this sub-committee dealing with public sector reform believes it should challenge this divisive narrative and recognise that public sector workers, even with this so-called phased restoration the Government is talking about, will still in 2018 be worse off than they were in 2009, by €200 if they are on a salary of €30,000, by €1,250 if they are on a salary of €40,000 and by €2,000 if they are on a salary of €50,000. This is so-called pay restoration. Nine years later, public sector workers will still be worse off than they were when all of the so-called emergency started and targeted their pay and made them scapegoats for the financial crisis produced by bankers, developers and politicians.

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