Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This is my third time to speak in the Dáil today. I was thinking that although the issues I speak to seem unconnected, they are not. These connected themes are homelessness, the attempt to bring us into a European army and the pay and pensions Bill before us. I say these are connected because this Government is weaving its own intricate web, connected by various threads. The Minister might wonder what I am talking about and the connections I speak of.

Another woman died on the streets last night and homelessness is a continuing and spiralling crisis in the country. Continuing policies of the Government have failed to deal with it. More resources are probably needed to prevent any more deaths on the streets. It will probably snow tonight and we will be thinking of those people stuck on the streets or in tents in parks. The second matter of the Permanent Structured Cooperation and the European army is related because it demonstrates how easily money can be found, if the Government wills it, under the Minister's guidance. Our military spending is to be moved from almost €1 billion to between €3 billion and €4 billion. It seems to be no bother and we will be able to find money to put into armies, arms and aggression. Meanwhile, we cannot find the money to house the homeless or end the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, legislation.

The Minister stated repeatedly in the Dáil in recent years that he could not end the FEMPI measures because doing so would be too costly for the State. As I recall, he referred to a figure of €260 million per year. Whatever the loss to the Exchequer, it certainly would be lower than the €3 billion to €4 billion the Government just voted through to take us into a European army. The Minister can find the money to suit his ends but not to pay teachers properly and end the discrimination that is at the root of the decision by the three teacher unions to reject the public service stability agreement. Following that rejection, the Minister used a big hammer to beat the unions over the head and impose further discrimination and pay inequality on their members. It is the first time a government has used such a hammer, and all to crack the three nuts that are the teacher unions. Fair play to them for rejecting the deal. Many public sector workers have told me they felt they had no choice but to accept the deal, precisely because the Minister was holding that big hammer over their head and warning that rejection would leave them tied into a permanent arrangement whereby the pay inequality imposed on them would not be addressed.

The FEMPI legislation is being used to penalise workers and entrench inequality. In my area, 11 beds at the Linn Dara facility in Cherry Orchard, an adult mental health unit, were closed at the beginning of the summer. By the admission of the Minister for Health, it proved impossible to recruit the psychiatric nurses needed to keep every bed occupied. A new recruitment drive has since commenced and the beds were reopened, but there is no escaping the admission that pay policy is driving nurses away. The nursing unions voted to accept the deal under pressure of the Minister's hammer. The teachers, however, have not fallen for that tactic and the Minister is now seeking to penalise them. The FEMPI legislation is a truly extraordinary emergency measure in that it is apparently possible to retain it year after year. There are 8,000 people homeless in this State, with families living in hotels for Christmas, children writing to Santa asking for a home instead of toys, and people dying on the streets. The Government will neither acknowledge nor address the housing emergency, but it insists there is a financial emergency that necessitates using legislation to penalise workers who do not agree with Government pay policy.

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