Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Before I begin, I want to assure colleagues that I do not have Covid. I have something that predates Covid, which I believe is called the common cold.

Various measures have now, rightly, been enacted to increase the pay of public service workers. They followed on from the cuts that were made in the wake of the previous financial crisis. Many public service workers remember only too well the impact of those harsh cuts, imposed by way of the FEMPI legislation. Those cuts have now been undone and the new public service stability agreement was broadly welcomed by public service workers and voted for overwhelmingly by the union membership. Even groups such as the section 39 organisations, the employees of which are not technically public service workers but work in sectors dependent on public funding, recently got a deal. However, there is a group of workers who have been left behind. They are very close to home, so close that some of them may be working in the Minister's constituency office in Cork. They certainly are working for members of his party in the Seanad. I am talking about Oireachtas parliamentary assistants, secretarial assistants and constituency secretarial assistants. Political staff are not technically public service workers as they are employed by Members, but their human resources management is overseen by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Minister's Department, is responsible for their pay, terms and conditions. Although these workers were not part of the FEMPI process, their pay, terms and conditions were very badly impacted, with pay freezes, reduced overtime and the removal of recognition of previous experience and qualifications. They agreed to accept these changes as, like their co-workers in the public service, they believed they needed to be done in the public interest. They also did so in order to maintain their link with the public service. That has not been honoured because the Department believes the link has been broken. As a result, a secretarial assistant today may be earning below the living wage. Secretarial assistants start at €24,423 per annum, which equates to €11.75 an hour. I hardly need to remind the Minister that the living wage is €12.90 an hour.

In 2015, the moratorium on pay increases was theoretically lifted. The then Minister even made an announcement to that effect, but the Department never signed off on it. In 2017, when talks around pay restoration were picking up pace, the unions raised the issue again. In 2018, it was forced to lodge a pay claim with the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC. SIPTU lodged the claim on behalf of secretarial assistants, which called for the introduction of a parliamentary assistant role in the Seanad and a compression of the secretarial assistant scale in order that staff would be rewarded for the essential work they do in the Oireachtas. It asked that prior service and qualifications be recognised once again. In 2019, the Seanad passed a motion calling on the Minister to meet with staff and union representatives as a matter of urgency. No such meeting has ever taken place.

We are about to enter 2022 and the time for meetings has long passed. The staff want to see action from the Minister immediately. The offer he made to secretarial assistants this year, of a pay increase of 1% in October, 1 % in February and a further 1%, was derisory. It would bring their salary to €25,162 per annum, or €12.09 per hour, which is still below the living wage. It was a slap in the face to the people who are doing the constituency work of the Minister and his fellow Fianna Fáil Deputies. It was a slap in the face to the people who are working extremely hard for his party's Senators. How on earth he has not seen fit to reach a fair deal with these workers is absolutely beyond me.

Turning to the Bill, I am happy to support the amendments, which have achieved cross-party support. That is welcome. I understand a member of the Government has even signed off on them. If enacted, the amendments will be an improvement on the status quobut they do not go far enough in some respects. It is not in the remit of the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission, nor should it be, to set anyone's wages. There are separate mechanisms for wage-setting and we must not interfere with them. Nevertheless, the amendments seek to move secretarial assistants onto a parliamentary assistant pay scale. As my colleague, Senator Gavan, said in the Seanad, we all know the title of secretarial assistant is a misnomer.

These people do the same jobs as parliamentary assistants, but are paid dramatically less. We believe that consideration should certainly be given to appropriately benchmarking the grade of secretarial assistant, but it should be based on job evaluation.

We also think that pay for secretarial assistants in constituency offices needs to be addressed. These people are working at the coal face. They work in the Minister's constituency office. He should thank them for their efforts in getting him elected. They are the ones who follow up with councils, help constituents deal with housing issues, make representations on his behalf and are the face of his constituency service.

No staff member should earn less than a living wage. Political staff deserve a fair pay deal, bringing all staff up to at least the living wage. It would cost less than the €81,000 increase the Minister recently gave to the Secretary General of the Department of Health. As a Deputy, the Minister's salary is more than €100,000 per year. He also receives a ministerial salary in excess of €80,000 on top of his salary as a Deputy. He gets lavish expenses, yet if he tried to recruit a new secretarial assistant tomorrow, he or she would earn just €11.75 an hour. How can he justify that? He certainly cannot justify it on the basis of fiscal prudence. There is nothing fiscally prudent about failing to enact the amendments to the Bill. The costs would be minor, but the change would have a significant impact on the lives of political staff. Enacting the amendments would cost approximately €2 million. Let us put that in context. Since it was announced that the national children's hospital had received planning approval, it has cost approximately €1.9 billion. That works out at €950,000 per day or close to €1 million a day. Between now and Thursday, the cost of the children's hospital would be about the same as the cost of enacting these amendments. Let us remember that only recently €81 million was blown on faulty ventilators that were never put to use. With that money, we could have enacted these amendments 40 times over.

The inflation rate is running at in excess of 5%, a 14-year high. We have the highest rents in the EU. The Government is facilitating a build-to-rent housing market for which people need an average salary between €50,000 and €60,000. The cost of living is spiralling. None of this would be affordable for Oireachtas staff members.

I do not know how the Minister looks his constituency staff in the eye. I know many Government Deputies are embarrassed by this situation, but like the others who have gone before them they hide behind the, "If it was up to me, I would give it to you" line. In some ways, they are correct. They have a point, because it is not up to them; it is up to the Minister. He holds the purse strings, power and authority. He is the only one standing in the way of these workers getting what they deserve for the valuable work they do.

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