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

They will rise this year, yes, in real terms, but we will not know that until next year because of the way statistics work.

On where the Government stands on this, we want to help the people of Northern Ireland and the Executive if and when it is established. We have the shared island fund which we can use to help in different ways. We have the PEACE PLUS programme from the European Union; €1 billion will be in that fund. We have made commitments, for example, on projects like the A5. We can make other commitments also. We want to help, certainly, if the Executive can be back up and running again.

On Deputy Barry's remarks earlier, if I understand him correctly he was encouraging workers in Ireland to go on strike like they are doing in Britain and Northern Ireland. I would not encourage that. It is causing huge disruption and inconvenience to people in Northern Ireland and in Britain and I am glad that we are not having the kinds of strikes which they are having in the UK at the moment.

There are fundamental differences. Pay in the UK is lower than it is in Ireland and, by and large, over the past five to ten years, pay in Ireland increased faster than inflation. That was not the case in the same way in the UK. That is a pretty fundamental difference. The other is that we have a central pay mechanism. We negotiate a deal with public sector workers in the round and in one go and that is a much better model than in the UK where it is done by a pay review body. The approach we have avoids strike action by and large and means by and large that workers get pay increases which exceed inflation. This was not true every year but has been broadly true over the past five to ten years. That is a good model and one we should keep.

See this speech in context