Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I apologise if I lost my temper earlier. I am a great believer in the conventions that rule this House, which are agreed by all, and there is a long-standing convention here. During Covid it changed, but post-Covid I thought we would revert to the Minister distributing his speech among colleagues so we have an opportunity to parse the words of the Minister in real time. It is unfortunate this is the second time this has happened on this issue, and that is a matter of record.

If I drill through the verbiage we have heard from the Minister, I can find nothing that will provide any comfort whatsoever to the firefighters who are out today in towns like Mallow, Mitchelstown, Kanturk, Millstreet, Bray, Drogheda, Nenagh, Balbriggan, Skerries, Athy, Maynooth and Dundalk, to name but a few. What comfort has the Minister given through his words tonight that the issues with pay and conditions and recruitment and retention, which are the kernels of this dispute, will be addressed? The Minister in public utterances was promising he would be delivering good news tonight. Where is the good news? I see no good news that moves the Minister beyond the position he had in November. We have had the surveys, but I see nothing in the Minister's words that will give comfort to the men and women who went out today and are going out again about their pay and conditions and the recruitment and retention issue. Recall the characteristics of these people. They serve their communities, serve us, for what is a pittance of pay when set against the risks they incur on behalf of us, the citizens. I do not believe for a moment a mechanism could not be found outside the formal pay talks that would allow for some exception to be made to allow retained firefighters' pay and conditions to be improved. There is precedence for that and it can be done. A mechanism can always be found.

The people I spoke to in my home town of Mallow have never gone out on strike and were very, dare I say it, anxious about doing that because they are not the type of people to strike. It is in desperation that they strike, because they feel their pay and conditions are so poor and that there is not enough of them to be able to cover the service they are duty-bound to provide. For the Minister to come in here and say there will be a minimum of 12 firefighters in all stations and that he will increase the cohort, if I understood him correctly, by 20% is absolutely laughable. The crisis is now. When does the Minister propose to increase the number in every station to 12 at a minimum? Having listened to the Minister's speech tonight I would not be surprised if more people leave the service. My goodness, the Minister has not a snowball's chance in hell of recruiting more people on the basis of the words he offered up to us here. There is no comfort for anybody who is thinking about coming into the service. In stations like Mallow, which I am familiar with as I live in the town, how is the Minister going to offer more structured time off if there are not more people coming into the service? We have the results of the survey. They are there for all to see. Recruitment and retention is a live issue that is happening now. For the Minister to say, if I understood him correctly, that there will be no reduction to the retained payment is patronising and condescending, or else I do not know what is. That was offered up as some form of positive note to the people who are concerned with this issue. I think people knew there was not going to be a reduction to the retained payment anyway and what we are looking for is an increase.

The Minister has not fully internalised the frustration people are feeling around this issue and has not fully internalised the extent of this problem. We know, because we have been here before through the previous Sinn Féin motion, what the value of a firefighter is to each community and what they deliver. We also know what they sacrifice in the form of the time they have to give and the constraints they are under to deliver a professional service, but the Minister has not come to the table, or to this House, with anything to offer words of comfort. That is reflected in the fact so many firefighters who came here tonight walked away during the Minister's speech, because he offered them nothing and there was the promise of good news. That is the greatest bit of spin I have ever heard, because there is nothing that is good news in the Minister's speech. It is quite insulting.

I return to the point I made earlier, namely, the Government can create an exception for a category of workers in any pay round or negotiation that is outside the norm if the willingness is there to do so. I contend we have here a special category of worker. The views of managers and firefighters were surveyed and 80% of managers said a revised remuneration model with more fixed elements of pay would help with recruitment and retention.

Furthermore, 80% of firefighters said a revised remuneration model with more fixed elements of pay would help with recruitment and retention. Two sides of the same coin, saying the same thing. We have to deal with this issue now.

With the summer that is here, I do not see why the Minister could not revise his position with a view to providing something more concrete than what he has given us here tonight. As a rule, I respect Ministers and the job they have to do. However, when a Minister says outside the Chamber that he is coming with good news and does not deliver on the good news but gives us pretty much the same speech as he gave in November, it is extremely disappointing for the people in the small number of towns I have mentioned, who provide the service to us, the citizens, for what I would consider to be a derisory income. Professional people, real citizens who are on call and who, because of the recruitment and retention crisis, constrain themselves in terms of their own freedom in their family or social lives. They will not walk away from the job because of that dedication to the service. I fear that after tonight, people will be watching these events and will say "What is the point?" The Minister came with absolutely nothing. They will have to wait much longer now for their terms and conditions of employment to be addressed and there was nothing of substance in terms of the recruitment and retention issue. It is a sad indictment of the Government. If they were really serious about it, they could solve this issue in a short space of time.

See this speech in context