Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

That does not mean everything else is fine. I and others have received letters from pensioners in their late seventies or eighties regarding the pension levy. There is something very wrong about such people having to pay a pension levy.

New entrants have been treated disgracefully by the FEMPI cuts. There is a pay generation gap where people are receiving unequal treatment. We are saying it is somehow okay to saddle young people, who are doing the same job, with a bigger burden than middle aged or older people because of a particular event in our economy. There is no justification for that. It is bad enough that the middle-aged generation and older people have saddled young people with enormous debt as a result of the bank bailout. That will have implications for their lives and the country for many years to come. To also say to them they will take the brunt of public sector pay cuts because of their age is completely unfair. It represents the most appalling slap in the face for the young generation. They already feel let down by their elders who made a mess of the economy, who let it rip and were prepared to stand by while the property bubble grew year on year until the country was brought to the brink of disaster and is now saddled with enormous debt for the future. Not only did our generation let down the people coming up behind us, our sons and daughters, but we told them they will pay a bigger price than anybody else. That has caused enormous division within Irish society. Many young people deeply resent what their seniors in politics have done to them. There are cohorts of Irish people in their twenties living in London, Canada and Australia who feel deeply let down by the political system. They regard this two-tier pay system as a slap in the face.

Not only are we telling them that jobs were not available in the years when there was no job growth, forcing them to emigrate but also that if they come back and work here huge problems are stored up for them, namely, lack of access to housing, whether to buy or to rent, the cost of insurance, health care and child care. That is very little encouragement for those people to come back.

My principal concern is about those who stayed behind and continued to run the public service, those who were recruited after 2011 and were treated disgracefully. Those people, on significantly lower pay, than their older peers, have now to contend with all those increases in the cost of living. Housing is unaffordable for most people younger than 35 years of age. It is increasingly difficult to put a car on the road because of the soaring costs of insurance. People who have what would have been regarded as decent jobs, such as teachers, nurses, gardaí and others and who in the past could have aspired to doing what people in their twenties and thirties expect to be able to do, namely, save to buy a place of their own, get married, have a family, the normal things that the older generation took for granted, find those normal things are no longer available to many of them. They cannot afford to have normal aspirations on their reduced pay scales. We have all heard from those people and felt that we have abandoned them. They are the abandoned generation who have been left to muddle on and have a strong sense that their seniors in their own professions, in trade unions and particularly at a political level were prepared to pull up the ladder behind them and tell them they could fend for themselves, they could swing for it. That is no way to treat the younger generation and we will pay a price for that. It greatly contributes to a sense of division and lack of cohesion within Irish society.

I received an email from a young teacher stating that in the first year after he qualified he was lucky enough to earn €19,000 on part-time hours. He got full-time hours, his workload has increased, his rent is skyrocketing, he can barely afford to put a car on the road because his insurance has doubled in three years. He is working next to people who do the same work but earn substantially more than he does. He claims that while it may be difficult to make the case to the Government, it is incredibly difficult to work in a profession that on the face of it values equality so much but values its newly qualified staff so little. He says they are not pawns, they are human beings, with lives to live. He says he qualified as a teacher and in June he will have two post-graduate qualifications but every year his salary is down approximately €8,000 compared with his peers. He has already personally sacrificed €20,000 for the State and that is before even discussing pensions for new entrants. He believes he has sacrificed enough. He wants the public sector pay talks to unwind FEMPI and deliver full pay equality for public servants hired since 2011.

We know, however, that those pay talks have not done that. Far from correcting the mistakes that were made in dumping on the younger generation in previous pay talks, the latest talks have compounded that division. There is now a nod in the direction of the two-tier new entrants. It is interesting to note what the agreement said about them. It states, "Accordingly, it is agreed that an examination of the remaining salary scale issues in respect of post January 2011 recruits at entry grades covered by parties to this Agreement will be undertaken within 12 months of the commencement of this Agreement."

As such, it is an examination within 12 months. The agreement also states, "On conclusion of this work, the parties will discuss and agree how the matter can be addressed and implemented in a manner that does not give rise to implications for the fiscal envelope of this Agreement". What we are saying is that we will examine it for 12 months and then discuss it to see how this issue might be addressed within the fiscal envelope. That means we will see how it might be addressed without it costing any more money. To my mind, that is to dump for a second time on new recruits and to deepen the generation gap which has been allowed to develop within the public service. That is disgraceful. It is absolutely right that the teaching unions are opposing the agreement. One teacher - an INTO representative - spoke to me last week about a situation in his school where almost half of the teaching staff next year will be new recruits. He asked how the established staff could possibly sell their colleagues down the river by agreeing to this. That mistake was made in the past and it should not be repeated. One cannot abandon people like that; one cannot abandon colleagues.

I want to speak briefly on the impact of FEMPI on people working in the health service. It is especially the case that nurses have voted with their feet and gone abroad. Nurses, teachers and many others are going off to Dubai and Abu Dhabi where they have the opportunity to raise money so they can lead normal lives by buying homes or considering starting families. It is those normal things they are not able to do here. In the medical profession, consultants have been particularly badly treated with the creation of a 30% pay gap between new entrants and existing staff. That is certainly a factor in so many going abroad. There is also a very serious problem in general practice. Through the years we have been saying that we must reorient the health service and that general practice and primary care must be the key drivers and service providers for the health service. That is the rhetoric, but the action has been to cut the incomes of general practices. General practice has been more deeply impacted upon by FEMPI cuts than perhaps any other sector. It is not just about GPs' incomes but about those critical practice supports which are so essential to the provision of capacity within primary care to provide services at the most appropriate level locally and in the community. Is it any wonder people are going abroad to develop careers as medics in countries with properly functioning health care systems and clear plans and where they are treated with respect and valued? Unless we address that, the haemorrhage of staff will continue.

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