Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I take it that the Minister would accept that in the past, certain specialists had special salaries, for example medical personnel, and so forth, within the military. Otherwise, they would not have been attracted to work in that sector because of the salaries available outside of it for people so qualified.

Can I take it that the rates that would be set for people like this with very high levels of skills will be equivalent to those in the private sector? I wish to put on record that I welcome the decision that PDFORRA and RACO could affiliate to ICTU in the way they did. That is a step forward.

One of the things that one cannot do forever, however, is that where there are wage anomalies, just because there are issues of parity, this cannot become an absolute rule that one can never change anything. Then the past becomes the present becomes the future. We have to have flexibility that where something needs to change, it can change.

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