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

-----let alone bringing up the fact that it will be gone. As part of my commitment on further steps, I will be meeting the representative bodies for pensioners in the coming period, as I promised to do. I have already met some of them. I will look at what further progress we can make on this. It is also a point which has been raised by Fianna Fáil in the context of the confidence-and-supply agreement we have with it and we will be looking to see what further progress we can make in the area. It is truly extraordinary, however, to hear Deputy after Deputy, particularly some on the far left, stand up and criticise where we are on pension provision without ever mentioning the fact that by the start of next year, those pension reduction measures will be gone for anyone earning less than €32,000.

Claims were made by Deputies, more on the basis of rhetoric than any sense of fact. A number of Deputies appear to believe they are doing their jobs by making themselves hoarse as opposed to referring to the facts which lie at the heart of the debate. At the culmination of the proposed agreement on the extension of the second Lansdowne Road agreement, many of the lowest earning people in our public service will no longer be dealing with the challenges of restoration. They will be seeing their wages increased beyond where we were when we started the horrific journey of the crisis. Again, these are facts which were not acknowledged by many of those who claim to have a monopoly on representing those who work within our society. At the culmination of this extension, many of those with the lowest incomes will not be on a restoration agenda but will in fact be on an agenda of wage increases versus where we were when we started all of this. That is fair, it is what they are entitled to and it respects the fact that some of the work they do is the most difficult and that the challenges they face are the most acute. We are doing that. Again, it is a fact that was not acknowledged at all by those who are the harshest in criticising what we are looking to do.

Another fact not mentioned by those Deputies who have been loudest in criticising the legislation is that this is an agreement which, if endorsed by public service union members, will look to deliver higher benefits to those who have joined since 2013 versus those who joined pre-2013. One can make the case that it does not do enough. That is legitimate and Deputies are, of course, entitled to that view. To fail to make any reference at all to it in the contributions, however, demonstrates that the only claim of the Deputies is to play to the gallery as opposed to representing those who are in it.

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