Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is nothing short of nauseating that the Government would consider it okay to increase the already staggeringly high salaries of super junior Ministers of €124,000 per annum by €16,000. How can it possibly justify that when nurses who were infected with Covid-19 on the front line did not get sick pay? That is the reality. Nurses recruited to the call for Ireland on agency contracts and on a fraction of the salary of these super junior Ministers did not get sick pay when they were infected with Covid-19 yet three super junior Ministers think they need an additional €16,000 per annum on top of their existing salaries of €124,000. It is unbelievable.

When I challenged the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donovan, about this yesterday and asked him to provide an explanation or justification for this pay increase for super junior Ministers who are already on high salaries he said that we need pay equality around the Cabinet table. People need to dwell on that fact. Our nurses have been fighting for pay equality for years now and it has been refused and resisted. There are nurses who, because they were recruited after 2011, have to work alongside other nurses who do the same job and are paid more. Pay and equality exists for super junior Ministers but the Government appears to think that it does not apply to workers on the front line, fighting to protect our health and our society. For a person on a salary of €124,000 per annum in the role of super junior Minister pay inequality is unacceptable. The double standards and hypocrisy of that are shocking beyond belief and an insult to our nurses, healthcare workers and front-line workers and others in the higher education area for which one of these super junior Ministers has responsibility.

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