Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will continue in the same vein as Deputy Cullinane. There is no excuse at this stage for any further delay in addressing a wrong. Unequal pay for equal work is wrong and it needs to be stopped. We need to compensate or address the anomalies that have been caused since 2011, to ensure people's pensions are not impacted because of cuts to their entrance wage or to their increments. We are not talking about a huge number of public servants. In the totality of the Government's budgetary figures, we are not talking about a huge amount of money. If we address this, it would go some way to addressing some of the industrial unrest. It might not help to reverse fully the problems we have in terms of retention of nurses, midwives or those in the Defence Forces, and there is a number of other related issues. When we have 10,000 nurses and midwives in the health services who do the same work as their colleagues but do so on less, there is, obviously, a draw to other climes where the pay is better, or at least equal, and the conditions are better and there is much less stress because they are more appreciated by the system. The same is true of teachers who, since 2011, have also suffered the same cuts and changes for new entrants. They also need to be addressed. There is nothing more galling than being in one room teaching a class while next door another teacher on a different rate is teaching a class. This has not been addressed. It should have been the first issue addressed with regard to public finances.

Deputy Cowen spoke before us and I heard him state this was a necessary step that had to be taken by his Government, which was compounded by the current Government. To this day, I do not believe this and that is a debate we will probably never solve. It is a difference of approach in how to treat public servants and whether we accept their full value or not. There are people in society who do not appreciate public servants and who are forever hammering them and who do not understand that the model which most of us espouse is an increase in public servants, an increase in public service and an increase in the quality of the service. We understand that to do this we have to increase the amount of money invested, but we cannot even begin to think this if we have an unequal system in the first place.

I urge the Minister of State to address this as quickly as possible so he does not have the situation that we have now, whereby the public service is not attractive for people to join, for example, in the nursing profession. Currently, the HSE has over 2,000 fewer nurses than it did in 2007. The population is growing and the complexities of the health service are growing, but we have fewer nurses to address it and there are many other issues in the health service that need to be addressed. We do not have enough GPs currently. What we are dealing with here is trying to ensure the public service is attractive to new entrants. The Defence Forces have had quite a number of arguments with the Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, on how to retain those who are in the Air Corps, the Defence Forces, soldiers and members of the Naval Service, and this is at crisis point at this stage because there seem to be more leaving than there are joining. We are going from one crisis to another in the Defence Forces, but the same is true of the teaching profession and nursing in particular. This is the urgency to be addressed in this, rather than prevaricating, waiting and delaying in delivering these changes in two, three, four or even five years' time. It needs to be done immediately.

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