Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Pay inequality in the public service has generated considerable public debate. As the Minister has often noted, the Public Service stability Agreement 2018-2020 provided that an examination of remaining salary scales issues in respect of those recruited after January 2011 at entry grades would be undertaken within 12 months of the commencement of the agreement.

The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, also says that graduates entering the public service today do so on a competitive salary. For instance, a teacher recruited in 2018 will start on just under €36,000. This will rise under the current Public Service Stability Agreement to nearly €38,000 by 2020. Across the labour market as a whole, the average starting salary for graduates is €28,554, with 40% earning less than €25,000. Some of these figures are hotly contested.

I refer to the conclusions of the Public Service Pay Commission report:

Having regard to all of the circumstances now prevailing the Commission has concluded as follows:1. A critical factor in any future pay agreement and/ or unwinding of FEMPI will be the State’s ability to pay in the context of competing pressures on the public purse.

Having reviewed the evidence presented to us in relation to pay levels and pay movements in the wider economy, we are of the view that there is a basis for parties to enter into negotiations for a further collective agreement to extend the Lansdowne Road Agreement.

The Lansdowne Road agreement is part of the problem.

We have come to a situation of yellow pack workers. I do not say that lightly. It is terrible terminology but that is what it is. That is the way new entrants are being treated. I could never understand how the trade unions signed up to the Lansdowne Road agreement knowing that was going to happen. They were all around the table. They seem to have looked after themselves and to have forgotten about the people coming in. It is a terrible situation in school staff rooms. There is inequality and it is impossible for new entrants to buy a house, to get accommodation or to live, especially for those living in Dublin city, because of the associated costs. It is awful discrimination to have within the system and within the rooms where they meet and interact, both the classrooms and the staff rooms where they are supposed to have a relaxing time. It is total discrimination.

It is the same with the nurses and many other public servants. We have huge issues in my own county of Tipperary in trying to recruit nursing staff. We just cannot get them. At a meeting with the HSE and the management of the hospital we were told they had recently gone to the Philippines and recruited 48. We are now in the process of having an extension built, a 40-bed modular unit. It is hoped that it will be built by next January or February. It will certainly be built but it requires a minimum of 75 people to staff it across a wide spectrum of roles, including nurses, doctors, cleaners, maintenance staff and the whole lot. We are not going to be able to get them. The HSE is overly fat with managers but we cannot get staff for this unit. The managers are well looked after because they have been in the system for a while. Even the new ones come in on good terms, but we cannot get the nursing staff. It is little good to provide money for the building if we cannot staff it, although it is certainly good to provide the money to get the building. The HSE will have to go off again to the Philippines and elsewhere to recruit. I have nothing against the Filipino staff. They are lovely and they are doing well but if their country's economy recovers and they are no longer available to us, what is going to happen?

Qualified people here are voting with their feet. General practitioners, GPs, are another area of concern. The cuts made in respect of GPs under FEMPI were just savage. They are self-employed people but they normally employ six or seven, and maybe as many as ten, people in a small community. Apart from providing medical care and looking after their patients, they are also employers, ratepayers and taxpayers. They pay for insurance, light and heat and provide other employment. They are a source of economic activity for a small area. They have been savagely hit. I know there has been talk about renewing the doctors' contracts, which is nearly 50 years old. The GP contract is totally out of date and must be dealt with. There is something badly wrong with the system when people are voting with their feet and leaving, including young, highly qualified nurses who we want at home. People who are highly educated, highly qualified and interested in the nursing profession are leaving and we are having to go on trawls all over the world to try to get people back in.

That kind of crisis is staring the Minister of State in the face across a wide variety of sectors. One can look to the Army or even to the Garda Síochána. I heard the Garda Síochána advertising this morning, thankfully, but new entrants are turned off because of the way they are treated. They are not treated with the respect they deserve. After all, they have gone to college and spent their money. Their parents or whoever possibly helped them They are then left to be treated as second-class citizens. It is totally out of order.

As I said, as control of the public service pay bill is a central determinant of governmental budgetary policy, it will be a matter for the parties to negotiate a timeframe that will provide for the orderly unwinding of the FEMPI legislation, having regard to maintaining sustainable national finances and competitiveness, other Government spending priorities, the public service reform agenda and equity considerations on public pay. There are huge issues here and it is time the Minister of State got stuck into them because he cannot just ignore it.

There are also issues in all Departments, including the Minister of State's own Department. For the year 2017, it spent €3.5 million on consultants. Is it that the Department's public servants are unable to do the work or that the Minister of State does not want to give it to them? He does not mind hiving off money to these consultants. Every individual Department is doing it. I had another reply back this morning. Millions and millions are being spent on consultants every year. To take the Minister, Deputy Ross's Department for example, it spent €1.6 million to have an American company look at how to organise and synchronise transport throughout the country. Some €1.6 million was paid for a report and then a paltry €460,000 was thrown out as a sop to organise a rural bus link. It has just gone bananas. The Government should respect the civil servants it has and pay them properly, especially the new recruits. The Minister of State knows the old saying. If one pays peanuts does he know what one gets? It is totally unfair. The unions have a lot to answer for, for having allowed that situation to be brought in in the first place. They have to answer for that.

It is a two-tier economy. The Government has money for everything. There is no problem at all paying consultants by the million. They get paid and go on their merry way. I have tabled parliamentary questions in respect of every Department and the figures coming back are astonishing. There are no value for money audits. What transport did the consultants organise in the Minister of State's county of Wexford or my county of Tipperary for that €1.6 million? None. It is money for jam. They can get what they want and to hell with the workers. The workers have to eat cake or whatever they like. It will be necessary for the Government to look at that issue.

The Army is another area in which staff cannot be retained, as is the Air Corps. We need and depend on these services. They do great work in rescue operations and everything else. As I said, yellow pack employment is thriving. It is horrible terminology but that is what it is. These workers are second class, they are not respected and they are not treated properly. On the other hand, community organisations in every one of our parishes are being smothered with red tape. They are now being threatened with a fine of €100,000 and jail if they do not comply with the Charities Regulator. I accept that we must ensure that there is no fraud and no misuse of funds but it is the big hand of the State coming down on the ordinary people.

The big hand of the State is mistreating younger and newer public servants and the other lads have gone off at the other end. Even when the late Brian Lenihan brought in the pension levy - with whom I must admit I had a row - a certain cohort of them escaped it. I asked the former Minister questions about it. They escaped the pension levy and except those on very low incomes, they were the only people who did. He went and checked and said that he had been told there were only 100 such cases. There were actually 797. That cohort never got hit with the pension levy. That is wrong. They are too close to power and too close to the system. They can get what they want without accountability. The ordinary people, especially the newer recruits, are mistreated that way. It all came from the same crash. The pension levy came in because of the crash but that happened and those figures are there. A total of 797 people, down as far as the ranks of chief superintendent and director of services in the councils, all escaped the pension levy, whereas the ordinary man with a shovel on the road or the ordinary clerk with the peann luaidhe or a computer in the office had to pay the pension levy. It is totally unjust and it is wrong morally, financially and in every other way. It is fact. Some people on the other benches are shaking their heads. I have the figures and can produce them. That cohort of people evaded the pension levy and that is sickening. Everyone else had to pay it.

It is time there was equality. We were here celebrating 1916 in 2016. It is time there was respect for ordinary workers who are trying to eke out an existence, who are barely surviving and who find themselves in poverty and in the associated traps. I am nearly finished and I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for his forbearance. We have a big job of work to do and, as I said, it has to be done equitably and fairly.

See this speech in context