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

I also wish to support Deputy Healy's amendment. The FEMPI legislation should be completely repealed. It has no justification whatsoever and it never did, by the way. It was based, in the first instance, on an enormous lie that was used to justify the austerity assault on working people after the collapse in 2008. The lie was that the reason we had a crash was that we had excessive public spending and that our public servants were paid too much. That was a total lie and utter nonsense. We had an economic collapse because of the reckless gambling by bankers and property developers, and the financial and governmental authorities which actively facilitated that with so-called light-touch regulation. This applies right from the European Cental Bank to our own Central Bank, the financial regulators and the two main political parties in this country, and all of their cronies in the banking sector and the building sector - all of the people who now are enjoying an absolute bonanza. That is the irony. They never got punished for their criminal actions in stoking up the property bubble and the crash that followed and they are now the major beneficiaries of the recovery, creaming in astronomical profits from the property sector on the back of a massive homelessness crisis. Who paid the bill, however? It was the poor public servants who bore no responsibility, except maybe a few at the very top who were part of the permanent Government. It was ordinary public and civil servants who had no responsibility for that crisis who were made to pay, and pay savagely, with this FEMPI legislation, which was the main instrument through which to impose really vicious austerity.

Before getting on to the specifics of what this Bill perpetuates in that great injustice and unfairness that was inflicted on public sector workers, it is very important to set it in a wider context. The big hidden story of what is happening in this country, and has been happening for approximately the last 30 years, is a massive redistribution of wealth from working people to capital. That is not something that is only said by the left and left-wing think tanks, although they have produced multiple papers on it, including those by Paul Sweeney, TASC and so on, which have shown there has been a consistent fall in the share of national income going to labour for the last 30 years. Paul Sweeney's paper in 2013 showed how the proportion of national income that went to labour in the 1970s in this country was in excess of 60% whereas it is now approximately 40%, so there has been a massive transfer. This was confirmed earlier this year by none other than the IMF, hardly the friend of working people, but even it has been forced to admit that this transfer is taking place. In fact, some of its figures are even more shocking, suggesting that average distribution of national income between capital and labour has moved from labour in the 1970s getting 75% of national income in advanced economies and only 25% going to capital, to a dramatic reversal of that today and with labour's share falling consistently.

Where this links to FEMPI is as follows. When the crash that was caused by the gambling bankers and developers and the politicians who supported them happened, rather than recognise that this was as a result of capital gone out of control and capital having too much control of our economy, the atmosphere of crisis was used to intensify an already ongoing assault on the share of national income going to working people. That is what has been done. Never waste a good crisis. Down to the letter, it was the shock doctrine that Naomi Klein had written about. My God, did Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael embrace the shock doctrine and target it at public sector workers with gusto, inflicting cuts on public sector workers they could not even have dreamt of before the crash in 2008?

When we think about what they have done, even with this so-called partial restoration of public sector pay the Government is trying to trumpet, after the savage assault that has been inflicted on public sector workers over the past ten years, at the end of 2021, under this legislation, public sector workers will still be earning less than they were earning when the austerity cuts were imposed. Therefore, in 2021, that is 13 years later, public sector workers will still be earning less than they were in 2008. My God. The most savage capitalist could not have dreamt of that before 2008 but the Government has managed to get away with it and is still trying to justify it as being reasonable under the guise of an emergency that the Government declared a few years ago to be over but which apparently still applies to public sector workers.

I am particularly infuriated by how, when we discuss the situation in the health services or housing, the Government mentions, to use the Taoiseach's term from today, "capacity restraints". We cannot solve the housing crisis because of "capacity constraints". The Government wants to restore the health service, but it is having difficulty recruiting nurses and so on. Why? It is because of this FEMPI stuff and because the Government turned the so-called pension levy into a permanent feature and wants to make pay apartheid permanent in terms of people who entered into the public service after 2011 or 2012 such that, even with this so-called restoration, new entrant teachers, nurses and others will, over the course of their lifetimes, earn approximately €200,000 less. It is worth considering what that means. If someone earns €200,000 less than somebody else who is doing the same job but just happened to be recruited into the public service before 2011, that is his or her ability to buy a house gone. With average house prices, a mortgage is actually in excess of that. If a worker loses €200,000, his or her capacity to purchase a home is wiped out by the pay apartheid that is imposed on post-2011 or post-2012 teachers, nurses and other public servants. How can the Government justify it? Spurious and dishonest justifications were given a few years ago, but the Government is still claiming it to be justified now when that factor, among other matters, is contributing significantly to the housing and homelessness crisis facing us such to the extent that tenured lecturers who are homeless are attending my clinic. That is how bad it is because of what the Government has done to pay.

Then the Government wonders why we cannot get people to return to the country and why we have a shortage of nurses, teachers and skilled workers in other areas of the economy. Unless it restores pay, we will not be able to get people to return and there will continue to be a brain drain out of the country of teachers, nurses and other educated professionals. It is shocking.

Even worse, this legislation continues the punishment of those who simply voted against it. It is the sort of action expected of tyrannical governments. We will have on our books emergency legislation that punishes people who put something in their union ballot boxes to say that they would not accept this legislation or the justification for it. The Government wants to punish them by denying them their increments up to 2021. It is disgusting. There is no other word for it. That word was misapplied to Garda Sergeant Maurice McCabe once upon a time in the Houses, but FEMPI is disgusting. For the Government to perpetuate this and punish people who stand up against it is unjustified.

I commend the bravery of the ASTI, the TUI, the INTO, the nurses' unions and so on who have spoken out against this. I hope that the revolt against this pay apartheid and emergency legislation will escalate until we begin to reverse the injustice that has been imposed on public sector workers and, as a critical part of that, reverse the transfer of wealth from working people to the rich and capital that has been ongoing for the past 25 or 30 years and is causing significant social tension and polarisation. Albeit slightly weakly, the IMF commented on that last point when it had to admit that income inequality and the unjust distribution of income in the world was significantly contributing to social tension. That was putting it mildly. People are fed up with it and will not take it for much longer.

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