Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am somewhat puzzled by this. I am glad we are having this debate in the Dáil. I do not think we would be having it were it not for the SAs who got themselves organised into the union, began to push to make this an issue and had webinar meetings with us in this Covid-19 time. Without them, we would not be discussing this matter in the way that we are. It is very important that we are honest with each other about this.

I could not do this job without the secretarial staff. My salary is now €92,000 or in that region. I am not banging on about it. I do not take the full salary. We take the average industrial wage and put the rest of the money away into a campaigning account. Having said that, there is still a very significant difference between my earnings and those of the staff without whom I would be lost. I would go out of my skull. I could not do this job without them. Very often they are in the background measuring exactly what I need to know today and what I need to handle because I have this meeting or that meeting. I may have to speak on several things, for example at the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action or the Joint Committee on Key Issues affecting the Traveller Community. They may decide that I do not need to know about some things that are coming at them in the office. They deal with the complex problems encountered by people as they try to access their rights in this State, for example with regard to social welfare, medical cards, HSE appointments or access for their children to proper care. While they are dealing with those very human and difficult conditions, either in the local office or over the phone, I am protected and insulated at the time it is happening. They do this in my good name. That is what I am elected for. They are a vital link to the community supports we can provide as Deputies.

By the way, we should not have to provide these things. If people have rights, those rights should be met in line with their entitlement to the things I have listed, for example in areas like social protection, health or education. These are rights that people should have. In this society, we often have to help people to fight for those rights and have them attained. It is the SAs who beaver away doing that in a sympathetic, compassionate and quiet manner. Since I was elected to this office, I have often received the most compliments about them and what they do. People really feel that the Conors, the Leahs and the Jacquis of this world are the face of compassion. They deliver and fight for issues and get the results that are required. They do not always get the results but they very frequently get the results that people cannot manage to get for themselves because the State has made it so cumbersome for them.

It is, quite frankly, embarrassing that we have to talk about this. It is embarrassing that when she started as a secretarial assistant for me, Leah Speight was on such a low rate of pay that she was entitled to claim the working family payment, which was then the family income support. At the same time, she was fighting tirelessly for other people to achieve their social welfare entitlements on an hourly and daily basis, just as Conor does in the office now. I do not mind naming them because I am very proud of them. They are politically conscious members of the People Before Profit Party. They are fighting to try to change the society that we are in and are doing so on absolute buttons. It is so embarrassing that they are being treated like this.

Over 20 years ago, I was a shop steward who represented people working in a trade union, ironically. We looked at our pay scales and said that they were awful. Again, we were at the coalface when workers contacted the office to say that they were about to be sacked or that their overtime had not been paid, or when they asked what they should do because their employer was making them work the following day when they were supposed to be off. We would take these queries, deal with them and pass them on to the officials. We discovered that the officials were on sometimes eight and ten times our salary. We did an analogue study which was a comparison between various trade unions. We compared our union with SIPTU, Unite, Fórsa and all of the unions and we arrived at a very intelligent claim for why our wages should be raised. We went to the Labour Court, made that intelligent claim and won our pay claim. I was thinking about how one would conduct an analogue study of the work of SAs who work for Deputies. Nothing compares to them. One could sing a song about it but there is nothing that compares to them. I cannot ask people in other organisations how their job compares to the job that our SAs do for us because there is no comparator. This is very much a case of injustice and discrimination. It needs to be addressed.

I do not understand this except to say that it occurred to me that perhaps there is a cultural, traditional and historical reason they are paid so low. Once upon a time it was just a lady, usually - a woman in the local constituency office who made the cup of tea, typed up a few letters and did the accounts at the end of the year. Nowadays, everybody is always connected through emails, phones, Facebook or WhatsApp. We are always connected. Productivity levels for all of us have gone up significantly, no matter where we are working or what we are doing, in comparison to what they were traditionally. This job needs to be reassessed and looked at in the cold reality of what it means.

For that we need a proper consultation process with those who carry out the function. It should come back to the Minister to reassess it in the cold light of day because at the end of the day he holds the purse strings. Why do we have people on family income support who are working their guts out to protect other people who cannot get family income support, medical cards or access to assessments for their children? There are so many problems in society.

I want to repeat that our secretarial assistants are always on; there is always connectivity and a way of reaching them and they always have loads of issues they have to pick up. Every one of us would be lost without them. They are heroes in many ways but they are not being recognised as such financially and they cannot continue to live on low pay. We will not be able to recruit the type of staff we need to perform the functions of Teachtaí or Senators unless we recognise that these are valued workers and that their input, compassion and understanding are valued. The pile-on they take from the rest of society on a daily and hourly basis has to be recognised. We need to look seriously at this. There may be cultural, historical and negative reasons why this is so but it is not fitting for 2021, never mind for 2022 and beyond.

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