Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Again, this is pushing the issue down the road for a few years. Let us play this forward. The Department carries out the review and there are public sector pay talks, followed, I presume, by an agreement. I then come back and raise the question of holding an independent review in, say, a year and I am told there was a review of the contract and it is the way it is. The public sector pay deal lasts for four or five years and at the end of that we will have a discussion around criteria. The contract was agreed, however, on an agreed definition of what an SNA did on the contract that was in place at the time. As such, as I see it, the Minister of State is effectively tying SNAs into the current criteria for the next five years if she does not do this now. The current criteria are decades old and do not reflect the essential role SNAs play, the complications involved or the expertise required for the role. We need to address those issues now. The Department is putting this on the long finger and could do so for years. The pay talks should go hand in hand with a review of the criteria. The review should not be put back.

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