Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The fact that 90% of public pay will be restored based on the legislation is to be welcomed. The legislation will, however, compound and copperfasten the unequal two-tier system for new entrants. Nurses, gardaí and teachers in particular, and other hugely important front-line staff will not have proper pay restoration under the legislation. These public service workers deserve equal pay for equal work. Instead, inequality is built into the Bill through pay differentials. Those public sector workers who were employed after January 2011 will continue to be discriminated against. Such discrimination and inequality will have been legislated for by Government. The Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland has calculated that teachers who were appointed in 2011 have already lost some €30,000 in earnings, in addition to the pay cuts that were also imposed on their more senior colleagues. Those who began teaching after February 2012 will earn nearly €100,000 less over a 40 year career than a teacher who began prior to 2011. One could make the comparison that if we told any new Deputies elected during the next election that they were to work for less pay than the quare fellas already here, there would be some row.

These losses mean that teachers will be paying well into their old age for the mistakes of the boom-bust economics of the past two decades. It is grossly unfair considering that the vast majority of them were students up until the economic downturn and did not benefit financially from the boom, nor did they contribute to the mistakes that caused such hardship.

Singling out new public service workers and front-line staff is deeply unfair, unjustified and economically damaging. There is no doubt that people who are on lower incomes are also spending a higher percentage of their direct earnings weekly than those who are better paid. The State and the economy generally benefits when these people are paid better. It is a win-win situation. I do not agree with the rationale of the State paying these workers less, no more than I agreed with the use of austerity to address financial problems. When times are difficult, investment by the State works better because it comes back in different ways.

Public servants will also have a lower entry threshold for the additional superannuation contribution. This is supposed to incentivise adherence to the terms of the agreement. It is a bizarre and perverse way of looking at this section of the Bill.

The Bill is punitive and is essentially an example of State coercion. It seeks to punish those new entrants to the public service, who are already discriminated against, for simply seeking to assert their rights through collective bargaining. These threats, and that is exactly what they are, will have the most severe effect on the same new and recent entrants to the public service such as gardaí, nurses and teachers who have suffered discrimination and pay inequality simply by virtue of the date they commenced their public service employment.

Pay cuts and unequal pay for equal work have been immensely damaging to morale within the public service, which is a big factor. God knows there are enough problems in Departments such as the Department of Justice and Equality without driving down morale even further by refusing to pay new entrants properly.

9 o’clock

Poor morale in the teaching profession has the potential to be a huge problem and it may lead to a brain drain. One finds teachers going to countries where English is spoken, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand and England, to earn a living and get a start in life. The proliferation of temporary contracts and precarious hours add to the problem for those who do not have full-time contracts. Many new teachers who have been educated and trained in Ireland will go abroad which amounts to a waste of resources and a loss of talent.

According to the research, there is a direct correlation between teachers' pay and the quality of education in a country. Those countries which perform best in educational terms are those which attract the best students to teaching by offering them higher salaries and greater professional status. The pay cuts and inequality targeting new teachers will have a detrimental effect on the future quality of education in Ireland. The Bill compounds the problem. The teaching profession has been devalued, making it a less attractive prospect for intelligent, high-achieving young people who are considering their future career choices. We can say the same about new entrant gardaí, nurses and others in the public service. If a teacher is in the job for 20 or 30 years, he or she is very well paid. In fact, because they are so well paid, they are encouraged to stay there forever, even when they are burned out. We are not attracting those young people we need to revitalise the teaching profession and schools. More should be done to get new people in.

I do not know how nurses do it. My mother, who is 93, spent three months in hospital three years ago. My God, I could not believe how hard the nurses worked. They were just amazing. They were fantastic but we do not pay them enough and new people coming into the profession are not being treated fairly.

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