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

As we proposed in the amendments ruled out of order, this section should include a provision to end the pay inequality imposed on new entrants to the Civil Service after 2011 or 2012. We will move on presently to a more detailed discussion of the pension levy and the punishment provisions of the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation. However, the pay apartheid that disadvantages new entrants, including teachers, nurses and other public servants, is one of the key concerns of the Irish National Teachers Organisation, the Teachers Union of Ireland and the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland. It is a concern that will continue to grow and give rise to increased anger. Teachers have been one of the most vocal groups in opposing this ongoing pay inequality.

The moratorium on public sector recruitment was never completely imposed on education, and teachers recruited during that period are in the vanguard of those affected by this injustice, this pay inequality, to the point that those recruited between 2011 or 2012 have lost to date between €26,000 and €28,000. If they started in 2013, they have lost €25,000; in 2014, €20,000; in 2015, €13,000; and in 2016, €6,000. Those losses in earnings and income for new entrant teachers will continue and increase as the years go on as long as this pay apartheid structure, two different pay scales, persists.

When the issue of pay apartheid is put to the Government and it is pointed out how wrong it is that one teacher will be working beside another teacher doing exactly the same job but on a different pay level simply because of the year he or she entered the profession, it dishonestly implies that is all to do with increments and says all teachers who enter the profession are paid differently according to the year. Yes, they are, but the issue is the pay scale. They are on different pay scales when they come in.

By the way, this affects the people who work in here. The ushers and service officers who come in after 2011 or 2012 will be on a lower pay scale than people who were recruited before that, doing the same job. Is that fair? It is completely unfair. It means that over their lifetime of employment they will earn considerably less than people who happened to be recruited earlier than them. For many of them, given the amount that will accrue to them over their working lives, that makes the difference between being able to buy a house and not being able to buy one. It is absolutely wrong.

The Government has never even acknowledged the injustice of it. It has never stated this is unfortunate but that at some point it will get rid of this, that there will be one pay scale. I would not accept it all, but many of those who have been campaigning against it have said if they at least had a cast iron commitment that there would be a return to a single pay scale, there would be light at the end of the tunnel. There is no commitment and that leads me and, I suspect, many new entrant teachers and public servants to believe there was never any intention to restore a single pay scale for public servants. It was a question of creating a new lower pay scale for public servants to generally reduce the levels of pay for public servants. That is absolutely wrong and the Government does not even have the honesty and bravery to admit that is what it is doing to workers. Instead, it dissembles and misleads as to the real impact and intent of this pay apartheid.

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