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

Some unions signed up to those agreements because they thought they were the best they could get but they are not happy about it. Many unions did not sign up to those agreements because they consider it completely unacceptable to have a pay apartheid whereby people who happen to be recruited after 2011 and 2012, and who over the course of their lifetime will earn maybe €100,000 less than somebody doing exactly the same job just because they happen to be recruited afterwards. That is the difference between being able to buy a house and not. Nurses, teachers and others working in the public service are part of the housing crisis, whereas decades ago, in the 1970s, a teacher or a nurse could at least hope to get a mortgage and buy a house. Is it any wonder that there is a capacity problem in the health service and we are having difficulty getting teachers? The Minister can quote all the figures he likes but there are shortages. That is why the Government cannot open the beds. The Minister for Health has acknowledged this.

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