Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What the Deputy describes is, quite simply, a misrepresentation of the facts that does not describe what is going to happen on 1 July. For those who are interested in the facts - I know most people are genuinely interested in the facts - I am going to set them out. First, this is not a pay increase; it is pay restoration. It is the reversal of pay cuts that happened more than ten years ago. Ten or 12 years ago, there were pay cuts across the board in the public sector. Those on the highest salaries had the deepest pay cuts for the longest period. This is the last group that is having its pay restored. It is not a pay increase; it is the reversal of a pay cut and pay restoration. If it was any other group involved, that is how the Deputy would describe it.

The Deputy stated that these people are civil servants. Again, that is not factually correct. Some 90% of them are doctors. Those doctors are public servants. They are working in our public hospital system. If I accompanied the Deputy to one of the maternity hospitals throughout the State today, the only person who would not have had his or her pay restored would be the one who performed a caesarean section at 4 a.m. If I accompanied him to one of the busy accident and emergency departments in any of our public hospitals, the only person who would not have had his or her pay restored would be the consultant doing the rounds and trying to get patients off trolleys and into beds. If I accompanied him to the children's hospital in Crumlin, just down the road from here, and we went to the orthopaedic operating theatre, the only person there who would not have had pay restored would be the person performing the scoliosis operation. These are people who are hard to recruit and retain. They are well sought after around the world. They are the last people to have their pay restored. That is what is happening. The way the Deputy tried to represent the position is simply non-factual.

On the wider issue of public sector pay, the Government believes that all public servants deserve a pay increase. We have already agreed a pay increase of between 2% and 3% this year, plus or minus an increment, and we accept that is not enough in light of the cost of living. That is why we are engaging with public sector unions on an agreement for a better pay increase than that, not just for this year but also for next year. As the unions rightly point out, there are three elements to this. It is not just about how much somebody is paid; it is about how much he or she gets to take home after tax and how far the money goes. That is what the unions refer to as the social wage. The space is there for an agreement if we take into account those three aspects.

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