Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We can only deal with this issue in the context of wider concerns and wider issues. There are lots of people working in the public service, 300,000 of them, including doctors, teachers, gardaí, people who work in this House and other civil servants. They all work really hard. There are lots of areas in our public service where we are now finding it hard to recruit because we are approaching full employment; indeed, that is the case across the private sector as well. We can only do things within the constraints of a limited amount of finance. We balanced the books last year, just about, but to concede to this and all the knock-on claims which would inevitably follow would require us to pay for it through borrowing. I do not think it is prudent, right or sensible in the long term to fund pay increases with borrowed money because that inevitably will turn into a pay cut in two or three years' time.

Those are the kinds of policies that Sinn Féin would pursue and that is where it would lead us. It would offer people-----

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