Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues for speaking in this debate on all sides. We used to have Teflon politicians. The Ministers of State, Deputies Jim Daly and Finian McGrath, are Tesla politicians because they think their Department is driverless. They think that they are not the Ministers of State in charge of the Department, that one is not the Minister of State with responsibility for older persons and the other is not the Minister of State with responsibility for disability services, based on the response the Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, gave this evening. He repeated the line that section 39 organisations are not obliged to pass on any pay reductions to their staff members, absolutely ignoring the instruction from the HSE to organisations in 2013 to apply reductions directly to staff costs. The Minister of State spoke about complexity and how we would recompense staff. I suggest that he recompenses them in line with the comment that section 39 organisations are to make an appropriate, proportionate contribution to the implementation of payroll and related cost reduction measures.

May I suggest that the Government make an appropriate and proportionate contribution to the implementation of pay restoration measures in the same fashion that it instructed organisations to in 2013? That would solve that conundrum. The Minister of State, Deputy McGrath, was slightly detached from the notion that the industrial action pending on 14 February has something to do with him. He made the plaintive cry that we should try to resolve that. He is the Minister of State with responsibility for disability and Deputy Daly is the Minister of State with responsibility for older persons' services. They can do something about it and actually take action on this motion this evening. They should not treat it like they treat all other Private Members' motions where they know that they will lose it so they will let it through and do nothing about it. They should do something about this one. I will hold the Ministers of State to do something about this. If those workers who work so hard in section 39 organisations decide they have no other option on 14 February, Valentine's Day, but to go to the picket lines, on the Ministers' watch be it. On their watch be it where families and services will be impacted and where communities will have their services impacted. The Ministers of State keep parroting the line that these staff are not public servants and have nothing to do with financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI. That is the evidence that they have. They were good enough to be instructed to take a pay cut but the Minister of State does not want to hear about them when it concerns pay restoration.

I agree with the Minister of State's sentiments about palliative care. We acknowledge the enormous improvements that have happened in palliative care but tonight there will be palliative care nurses in the last minutes and last hours of patients' lives. They will be there with distraught families. When they go and get their pay cheque tomorrow or tomorrow week, it will be less than what they would have got had they been employed by the HSE. They do amazing work and the Minister of State is right to point to the development but if he is that committed to and that passionate about palliative care, then pay the nurses properly. Pay the disability workers properly and the people who will spend nine or ten hours tonight in a respite house with people with a disability. Respect them not with just words or platitudes, but in their pay cheque. Respect their qualifications as professionals. They get up early in the morning. The Minister of State's leader is fond of that phrase. They go to bed late at night. The difference for them is that while they have the Government's platitudes, they do not have its money.

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