Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I commend my colleague, Deputy Calleary, for bringing forward this important Private Members' business. The Minister of State does not need me to tell him the important work that section 39 organisations and their staff do, or about the work that they provide at a very difficult juncture for our health service. They need our support. I think the Minister of State is being disingenuous, or at least his Department is when it tries to suggest that the motivation behind this motion is to somehow make public servants out of these staff. We are trying to get a correlation between the wages paid to people who do exactly the same work. The Minister of State and the Department know that the directive issued was issued to ensure that the staff in section 39 organisations had their pay cut to the same level as public servants. All we are asking is for parity of esteem and that, as the economy has improved, for people to be treated in the same manner. The work that these people do is extraordinary. It is done in difficult circumstances and is emotionally draining. They are under pressure and need to believe that the State is treating them adequately and fairly. There is an opportunity to do that now. The Minister of State does not need to kick it to touch. He can accept that these people are not trying to get all the benefits associated with being public servants but they expect to be paid equally for equal work. I implore the Minister of State, on behalf of everybody in this House, to stop the filibuster, to call out the Department and to say to it that this is the right thing to do and to do it.

We have done it ourselves. We are not civil servants. We took pay cuts in line with the section of the Civil Service that we are linked to, as principal officers. The Minister of State is linked to an assistant secretary, and Ministers are linked to Secretaries General. We are not civil servants. Our pay was reduced in line with their pay. Our pay is being restored in line with their pay. The Minister of State should do the same for section 39 workers.

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