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

The Covid emergency did not stop the Minister from giving a €16,000 increase to the super junior Ministers, which is absolutely outrageous. The ordinary public servants who were robbed to pay for the bailout of the banks should get their pay restored. Indeed, it should have been restored long before now but the idea that politicians on extraordinarily handsome salaries of €96,000 should get a pay rise at the very same time that the Government is cutting the PUP for people who have lost their jobs and seen their incomes hammered as a result of measures imposed by the Government is sickening.

The increase that Deputies will receive is around €45 per week on top of an already very handsome salary. That is just a little less than the amount the Government has taken off PUP recipients. These are people who were, in most cases, on much lower incomes in the first place. Their income fell to €350 per week because of pandemic measures imposed by the Government and now their incomes are being hammered down by another €50 or €100. Does the Minister not think that is sickening and unacceptable in the current climate?

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