Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Mattie McGrath for facilitating me. This is the last day before voting in tomorrow's referendum and many of us have been trying to multitask. The worst example of the Government's failure to address pay inequality in the public service is in the plight of section 39 workers. I have raised this now with the Taoiseach and the Minister, starting when the last Government was coming to the end of its life and I became aware of the fact that it would start becoming an issue. I have also raised it since we left the Government.

There has been a bad strategy with section 39 workers to string out the process so they will remain deprived of the restoration of something they gave up on a voluntary basis at the height of the crisis. I understand the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has said on a number of occasions that he estimates the cost from studies carried out by the economic evaluation unit in the Department of Finance and others as being somewhere greater than €200 million when all the cuts that section 39 voluntarily took at the country's hour of need are considered.

I have spoken with many chief executive officers and other executives in section 39 organisations. I stress to the Minister of State that they were not left with a voluntary choice as the country was going down the tubes. They were advised by the Health Service Executive, HSE, that they had to cut their budgets in parallel with what was happening in public services generally. It may well have been done by an overall reduction in budget capacity that was reflected in reductions in pay accepted by the workers in those organisations. During our time in the Government, with Deputy Howlin as the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, there was a process of restoration and reinstatement of pay cuts agreed with public service unions. People in section 39 organisations were left out.

Over the course of the past two budgets, Fine Gael was going around saying it had lots of money for tax cuts. While we saw some of that, it did not have enough money to do the decent thing and restore payments to section 39 workers.

There are a few examples of affected workers where there is a particular wrong. The circumstances in this State mean that many hospices have service level agreements with the HSE to provide end-of-life services, which everyone will attest are fantastic compared to the experience of dying in busy general public hospitals with lights, trolleys, emergencies and mixed wards. The hospice movement provides a level of care and comfort for people in their last days and their families, which has been superb. As the Minister for Finance and his Department are well aware, hospice staff have exactly the same qualifications as the staff who work in the HSE. On the north side of Dublin, we have the St. Francis Hospice, which Deputy Broughan and I have spoken about on many occasions. Where nurses, doctors or therapists leave the HSE to become hospice staff, there is a great deal of research to show that providing end-of-life care is a highly stressful and important job for them and their families. Notwithstanding all their great dedication and work and the continuous visits to the Oireachtas from hospice groups and section 39 bodies, not only are they not top of the list for pay restoration but little or no progress has been made. In fact, there has been sleight of hand and the use of clever tricks by the Department of Finance to rule such people out. The Department knows that they are highly unlikely to take urgent action which might affect terminally ill patients. Thankfully, hospices are now providing end-of-life care within general hospitals which has led to great improvements in the hospital service. I refer also to employees in organisations such as Rehab which provide essential services.

I do not understand the Department's argument other than as sleight of hand and a case of being overly clever in asserting that section 39 bodies do not fall under general pay restoration. It is a foolish position and the Department must enter clear negotiations. Significant sums have been identified, but Fine Gael is still talking about tax cuts in the forthcoming budget. While the recovery from the crash continues, certain categories of workers are being told that while they made sacrifices in the public interest, the Government is not interested in treating them equally when it comes to the restoration of public service pay. That is simply wrong. We have a process for the Civil Service and we need a very clear process here too. If a nurse or doctor leaves a general hospital to work in a hospice, he or she will be offered a salary which is 2% or, if this continues, 3% lower. People cannot do that, particularly younger staff members. They have to pay rent. I saw an advertisement in the newspaper offering a one-bedroom flat in the Finglas area for €1,400 per month. One could get a two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood for that kind of money. Housing costs are distorting the real value of public service pay. This has happened in Ireland before and it is leading to a crisis among younger people in the public service.

I draw the attention of the Minister of State to a further anomaly, albeit I am sure he is already aware of it from his own constituency. There are young teachers who are now significantly below the pay rate of their counterparts in the profession who decided with their unions at the time of the crash to agree to a reduction structure which affected new entrants more than existing professionals. That decision was made then and large numbers of young people are affected by it now. We need a clear pathway to fair restoration. The #MeToo movement has given rise to a huge change in public consciousness having regard to the general principle of equality between men and women and the need to embed it in our modern society. Public servants, however, are being cut out of the loop in relation to fair and equal pay treatment and there is a similar movement in relation to that issue now. It was good of the Minister of State to set out where we are at in his opening statement, but there was no sense of urgency in what he said. There was no sense of a demand for and recognition of equality. There was no sense that the Government wants to take action. Indeed, we do not even have the figures the Government has to play around with coming up to the budget.

See this speech in context