Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will take ten minutes and Deputies Cahill and Lawless will each have five minutes.

Having sat on the other side of the House for the introduction of much of the FEMPI legislation, it is one of those Bills one tends to remember where one was sitting when we introduced it because it brought huge pain to many families which, obviously, we did not want to do but we were left in no position other than to do it. It is worth recalling some of the key elements of it. In 2009, the pension related deduction was introduced, which brought in, effectively overnight, a further 7% reduction in salaries. The PRD was contributing about €900 million a year to the Exchequer. In September 2009 we introduced an 11-month pay freeze. An issue that is often forgotten is that pay rises that had been committed to under previous agreements of 3.5% in September 2009 and 2.5% in June 2010 did not happen.

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Instead, substantial pay cuts were provided for in December 2009. The €1.1 billion that is needed to fund this legislation is just a portion of the contribution made by our public and civil servants to this country's economic recovery. We should also take into account the extra unpaid hours that were introduced and the extra burden taken on by many people in standing up for services in many areas that had been savaged. It is important this evening to remember the very real cost of FEMPI to families. In that context, I welcome the introduction of legislation to signal the end of FEMPI. I acknowledge that the Minister and the trade union movement have done a great deal of work. The Bill is not perfect. We want to engage with the Minister on Committee and Report Stages to try to improve it. We will signal a number of areas that need urgent attention. As my time is limited, I will focus on a few of them.

The flexibility of our public service was most evident in Mountmellick last week, when members of the Civil Defence, local authority staff, Army personnel, gardaí and welfare staff mobilised overnight to provide an effective on-site response to a serious situation that was developing. I could mention some other initiatives, such as the introduction of online passport applications and the various changes in welfare and community welfare services. I know the Minister presented awards to civil servants on Monday evening. All of these changes were introduced during the FEMPI era with a view to improving people's experiences. Despite the cuts I have mentioned, the civil servants who introduced these changes did so with a willingness to make people's experiences of the Civil Service better.

We want to signal our concerns in a number of areas. The new contracts that were introduced during 2012 have added a new layer of pay in many areas, the most high-profile of which is teaching. These changes have also been applied in the medical sector and in the Garda. Many staff in the Oireachtas who are doing the same job are being paid at different rates. The Public Service Pay Commission is commissioning a report on this issue as part of an examination of how we should address it. We need to acknowledge that pay inequality is causing dissent in the public sector and is putting pressure on people. When we ask two teachers to teach classes, we pay them differently. When we ask two gardaí to walk the streets at night to protect us, we pay them differently even though they face the same level of danger. I acknowledge that a report has been commissioned. We must see it as soon as possible. The three teaching unions, particularly the INTO and the TUI, have concerns about this Bill that are based completely on pay inequality. We need to move to address that.

We will also be looking for clarity with regard to the future of allowances that were withdrawn during the period of FEMPI cuts, particularly in nursing and teaching, having originally been introduced by the Labour Court. The allowances available to teaching principals in primary schools in recognition of the extra burden they carry were reduced. This should be reconsidered, as should the allowances that were paid to teachers in Gaeltacht areas in respect of teaching through Irish and having to access teaching materials through Irish.

In addition to pay reduction, there has been a significant change in human resources policies in the public sector. The public and Civil Service now faces a substantial human resources challenge. While pay is an issue, old and inflexible human resources practices are discouraging our nurses and teachers from coming back and taking up positions. We need the best staff possible to fill shortages in areas like medicine and teaching. We have a shortage of pilots in the Air Corps.

According to yesterday's newspapers, which covered news other than the obvious, just seven physics graduates are currently training to go into secondary teaching. That is an extraordinary failure for a country that prides itself on its efforts in the area of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. We are not encouraging the best graduates to go into teaching to ensure we have a throughput of science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers. We need to look at human resources practices and make them relevant to the workforce of today. There is a need for flexibility with regard to matters like career breaks. The rigid approach of the past must go if we want to encourage people back into the public service.

Pay is an issue, but we need to be much more flexible regarding human resources. As part of that flexibility, we need to come back to the question of pay equalisation. We like to have gardaí, nurses and teachers living in our communities, but if they are on the new levels of pay they cannot afford to live in Dublin because of rental costs. Public service employers must look for imaginative solutions, perhaps involving housing co-operatives for teachers and gardaí. This is not solely a wage issue. We need to make it more attractive for our public servants to come to work in Dublin. If we want to them to give their time and dedication to the public service in Dublin, surely it is not beyond our ingenuity as Members of this House to help employers and senior managers in the public service to find ways to facilitate this.

FEMPI also put huge pressure on many contractors to the State, including pharmacists and GPs. There are pressures in such areas because of the decreased availability of professionals to supply services. GPs and pharmacists took a particularly big hit under FEMPI. If we are to move to Sláintecare, which places a massive emphasis on primary care, we have to reinvest in our GPs and pharmacists and give them an incentive to build the kind of primary care structure we want and consider necessary in order to reduce the pressure on our health service. The reimagining of their role that will be required in the context of the reversal of this legislation should be linked with our ambition to create a proper primary health care service, as set out in Sláintecare.

The reversal of certain reductions that is provided for in this Bill constitutes a nod in the direction of retired public servants. Although the cohort of retired civil servants comes under the broader church of ICTU, it is not formally represented. I have raised this issue with the Minister on many occasions. This was the first time we cut their salaries. Many of them do not have the possibility of getting this money back over time. For many of them, time is not on their side in terms of making another income. We must find a more formal way ensuring retired public servants, who have much to give, are properly involved. I acknowledge that the Minister has met representatives of the alliance on many occasions. There needs to be formal recognition of their role in talks which affect their income and conditions.

I am nervous about the inclusion in this Bill of an aspect of industrial relations strategy. I will expect to hear more on this issue from the Minister on Committee and Report Stages. Sections 11 to 14, inclusive, differentiate between public servants who approve the deal and those who do not. This strategy has been agreed by the employer, but I remain to be convinced that it belongs in primary legislation. We need to work to consider that in much more detail.

This legislation represents an improvement on where we have come from. It is a step in the right direction. While we need to look at pay and conditions, as I have said, we also need to reimagine the role of our public service. We need to make the public service a place in which people are happy and proud to work. We owe a huge debt to our public service. As we come to the end of this year, I think of events during the year like the loss of Rescue 116, to which the public service responded by mobilising in defence of their colleagues to try to find those who had been on board. Public servants are able to mobilise quickly in response to major events around the country. I have already mentioned what happened in Mountmellick last week. We cannot continue to depend on their generosity of spirit. We have to reward them financially while respecting their ambition to have career pathways in the public service. They need to be assured that a career in the service of the State can be as rewarding as a career in the private sector. The public service should have all the advantages of the private sector. It has many of them, but there are many areas in which public servants do not have sufficient control. As public representatives, we need to show ambition by giving them that control.

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