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

In the same vein, there is a report in this morning's edition of the Irish Independentabout a summer of discontent. The article listed a series of workers who have voted for strike action. As well as water workers, they include firefighters, paramedics in the National Ambulance Service, emergency call operators in Munster and pilots at Emerald Airlines. We already know that nurses have voted for strike action over safe staffing levels, while the scientists who took strike action last year are before the Labour Court next week.

When we raise workers' issues here, we are constantly told that this country has a very good industrial relations model. It may be a model that works because the lid has been kept on it for so long but what does the Taoiseach have to say about a potential summer or even winter of discontent, where workers have to fight for reform of the public sector, for working conditions to improve or go back to where they were pre-Covid, over retention and recruitment and, crucially, over pay being below inflation rises?

This is a very big issue for workers throughout the country who effectively are taking pay cuts.

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