Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to finally make a contribution to this debate, which has been put back on many occasions, though for good reasons. The Minister refers to the importance of concluding the job of repealing FEMPI. I was reminded that this is my annual opportunity to remind people in the House that I was part of the trade union delegation in Government Buildings on the night that FEMPI was announced. We did not know what it was. We certainly did not believe we would come to use the abbreviation for it. I am not sure if the Minister was there personally, but I know that many of his colleagues, most of whom are still around, attended a briefing in December before the FEMPI legislation was introduced. They attended a briefing in the audiovisual room with me and Patricia King. We had a deep discussion and engagement in which we outlined how the savings that had to be made could have been made without impacting on the rate.

We were very clear at the time that it would have been wrong to impact on the rate of pay. It was wrong then and it is still wrong. There were changes that could have been made in respect of unpaid leave, etc., which would have ensured that the rate for civil and public servants would have been protected. We were also of the view that the Government could have made the savings it needed to make without impacting on civil and public servants, most - indeed all - of whom were working hard and who were not at fault for what happened. Indeed, when the Minister's party was busy crashing our economy off a cliff, many civil and public servants I was representing, such as nurses and healthcare workers, asked what they had done to deserve what was visited upon them. They said they had worked hard and come to work early in the morning, as the Tánaiste likes his workers to do, and did everything that was required of them. Their only crime was that they worked for the State, which could just slash their wages. Indeed, we were brought in to try to negotiate that. It was a horrible time to be representing workers in the face of a Government that was dead set against them.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in the context of the pension levy. If the Minister will recall, the pension levy was imposed on all civil and public servants, but there is one particular group in respect of whom the cruelty of it has never left me. It was levied on home helps, who were the lowest paid and doing probably the most precarious type of work within the civil and public service. They had to pay a pension levy. Of course, as the Minister can imagine, as soon as that was announced, my phone lit up like a Christmas tree because, as the workers pointed out, they did not qualify for pensions. So, it was never a pension levy - it was a pay cut. It was not put to them in that way. I spent a lot of time talking to people and explaining that it was not a pension levy and its introduction did not mean that they would get a pension. It was most unfortunate and sad that some of them believed that the Government was finally going to grant their demand for pensions. How could workers be subject to a pension levy if they did not have pensions? They had no pensions but they still paid the levy. I thought at the time that there was a cruelty in that. As the Minister will know, many of these people worked hard. We know that home helps in particular do quite thankless work. They provide great value for money, actually. However, often their work goes unrecognised and unrewarded.

I know that the Minister will not be unaware that only a few months ago the House passed a motion in respect of the pay of student nurses. The Government is talking about equal pay for work of equal value at the moment. If nurses and student nurses are working, they should be paid. We know that reviews are planned, but these people should be paid for the work that they are doing. Due to the systematic and systemic underfunding of our health service over decades, the wards that student nurses go to work on, where they are supposed to be supernumerary, are often understaffed. It is most difficult to be supernumerary and not to help and work. In light of the motion that was passed unopposed in the House, it would be a decent commitment to make to ensure that in cases where they are working, they get paid. Paying them the healthcare assistant rate is the most obvious solution as is the introduction of a system of allowances that are appropriate and recognise the work that is done.

While I am on the topic of the health service, I want to raise the matter of the bill for agency staff. In 2019, the agency staff bill was running at approximately €1 million per day. To my knowledge, no value-for-money audit of any kind of scale or quality has been carried out in respect of the spend on agency staff. Do not get me wrong; I know that the health service and other areas of the civil and public service need agency staff from time to time. However, the problem has become apparent in the past number of years because of the recruitment moratorium. The Minister will remember from his previous experience in government that two years before a recruitment moratorium on the rest of the civil and public service was imposed, a recruitment moratorium was imposed on the health service. As a result, it has more catching up to do in terms of staffing levels. It is even further behind than other sectors. The latter has generated an over-reliance on agency staff that is expensive and does not offer not good value for money. Indeed, it takes away the potential of being able to pay our student nurses, radiographers and other people working within the civil and public service who have been working and because of the nature of their work, often find themselves in situations where learning is possible, but they learn on the job. They do end up as part of the team. As we emerge from this pandemic, which will hopefully be soon, that is something that we would do well to reflect on, on behalf of the people who have worked all the way through it. The very least they deserve is to be paid for the valuable work that they are doing.

I might just move to another topic, namely, the pay deal agreed recently . As my colleague, Teachta Mairéad Farrell, pointed out, we did not comment on the deal. Having had the experience of bringing pay deals back to workers, I was never grateful or thankful for politicians interfering in that. It is much better to let the trade unions get on with their business. However, there are thousands of workers who will be impacted on by this deal and who were not represented. I recall, from my time on the public services committee of the Irish Congress of Trade Union, ICTU, talking to representatives from the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, the Garda Representatives Association and PDFORRA, who often referred it as being like the big table and the little table, or the upstairs and the downstairs. Negotiations took place with the ICTU public services committee in respect of the deal, but that group of workers is completely disenfranchised. The fact that gardaí and members of the Defence Forces are prohibited from being members of ICTU effectively excludes them from those negotiations. I know the Minister will be familiar with the phrase "nothing about us without us". It was long the cry of the women's movement. It means being left out and having decisions taken by other people. In order for any future pay negotiations to be reflective of the broader civil and public service, all persons who are affected should have a right to sit at the big table, be part of a parallel process or a secondary set of discussions. As we know, members of An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces turn on the radio to find out what has been negotiated. That is not very fair.

The Minister will be aware that the report by the European Committee of Social Rights which was published recently found that the refusal of the Government to allow An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces the right to collectively negotiate pay deals and denial of the right to strike is in breach of the European Social Charter. The Minister should not take my word for it, he can take the committee's word for it. These workers deserve a seat at the table. They work hard and they are civil and public servants. The way that the pay is determined means that it is not open to an individual member of the Defence Forces or An Garda Síochána to stroll into the boss's office and ask for bargaining on an individual or face-to-face basis because the workers cannot collectively bargain. That option is simply not open to them. What they have instead, is a system whereby pay deals are negotiated by ICTU, which should be doing that on behalf of its own members, and these are then imposed on members of An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces without them having an opportunity to have an input into that. As I have said, this has been found, time and again, to be wrong. Yet, we see intransigence on the part of the Government.

The Government is doing the members of An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces a disservice by not allowing them that opportunity. They want to have their voices heard. They are members of associations which are de factotrade unions, but without the title. I ask the Minister to consider allowing these workers to have a full seat at the table.

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