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

Many public servants are earning less now than they were ten years ago during austerity. They have not had their pay restored and they are working longer hours. Let us think about our nurses.

They are overrun and underpaid and there is pay apartheid. The same is true for our teachers, and there is pay apartheid even for the service officers and ushers here in the House, who are paid different rates depending on when they came into the place. I would not, therefore, laud the treatment of public servants. Some, perhaps, are very well paid and well treated, but others not so.

That is a somewhat separate argument, and, of course, there are complexities and nuances to a four-day week, but it is about establishing the basic principle. Once upon a time, the weekend was considered impossible and there was no such thing. We then got a weekend because people fought for it, and society and the economy were better for it. The very same principle can apply to the four-day week,s and it is not about cutting people's pay.

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