Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will deal with the matter as it relates to public pay. I will deal with each of the Deputy's contentions in turn. Her first was that the Government has sat on its hands regarding this issue. She will be aware that we had a commitment under the current pay agreement to put in place the Public Service Pay Commission. We honoured that commitment. There was a commitment that this issue would be the first that the commission would examine. That is what happened. The commission then issued a recommendation, which the Government accepted immediately, in the next few days. We made a specific commitment in our budget to honour those commitments. Since then, extensive engagement has taken place between the HSE and the representatives of the nurses. The matter is now very likely to be referred for further engagement in our industrial relations machinery and the Government will play its full role in this process. We have to be conscious, however, of all the other public servants, the tens of thousands of others, to whom we have also made commitments. We have a duty to them just as we have a duty to seek to resolve this issue.

The Deputy's final point was on the effort we made to deal with new entrant pay and determine how the matter could be dealt with. We put in place a comprehensive plan in this regard that was accepted by the leadership of many of the key unions. We are now engaging actively with them to determine whether there are ways in which this issue can now be resolved.

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