Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Calleary on this motion, which I fully support. When the country hit a wall in 2009 and 2010, these workers were told they were the same as the HSE and that they had to take the cuts. They took them, like most people in middle Ireland, while at the same time the Government decided to put €65 billion into banks to make sure they were okay. Ordinary people right around the country struggled. Now that things are improving, the same workers under section 39 have been told they are different. This is intolerable for them.

In his speech, the Minister of State said he would look at the issue. There was nothing in it. I remember sitting beside him when we were in opposition. He would have jumped up and down if he saw workers being treated in such a way.

The Minister for Finance has pulled a cunning trick over the past number of years. Pay increases were announced, but the money was not given back to where it was needed. Whether the money has to come from the HSE or a different body, the Government has to give it. The funding needs to be provided immediately.

It is especially sickening that this debate is happening at a time when it has been announced in all the newspapers that ex-taoisigh and Deputies will receive increases of between €3,000 and €5,000. People in middle Ireland who have struggled throughout the past four or five years to pay their mortgages and raise their families, and who go out to work every day have been left in a situation whereby the Government did not care whether they got their funding back. As Deputies, we need to examine where all this is going.

Middle Ireland has not been given a fair say. Talk and sympathy does not put food on the table. Pay needs to be restored immediately to the 10,000 or 12,000 people affected. Fair play to those who protested outside the Dáil on a cold day like this. Paul Bell was with them. They need to ramp up their campaign if they are not being listened to. There is a duty on us, as politician, to act. While the motion will not solve the problem, there is a need for the Government to come out with a clear message and say that pay will be restored.

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