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

It is worth this House noting that tomorrow, over 200,000 public sector workers will take strike action in Northern Ireland to secure a pay increase. They have traditional been very badly paid and so I salute them. We should note this because these workers are in our country. We may not have jurisdiction over them but it is a very important strike. Also important are the pay talks with the public sector that are happening here. I note that the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has put a colouration on it that the Government made a very generous offer to the public sector. However, when we consider that the rate of inflation was up in December and that over the past year it was at 6.3% while public sector workers got less than 4% of a pay rise, there is a lot of catching up to be done. It behoves the Government to sit down again with the public sector unions and revise the offer-----

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