Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The programme for Government refers to work-life balance, quality of life, quality employment and it even contains the phrase "a secure future for all living things", which is quite a noble ambition. I want to shout out for a group of workers very close at hand who do not have any of those things. They are the majority of people who work for Oireachtas TV, who broadcast proceedings from this Dáil Chamber, the Seanad Chamber and the committees but who are only employed on the days that we sit. That means that over the course of the year, they earn about €12,000. Imagine trying to exist on €12,000. Imagine over the last three months, as the Government was debating who would be in government and then forming that Government, not having any work and not knowing when they were going to be able to work, being laid off during the summer, at Easter and at Christmas but having to be always available to work for the company, whose name is Pi Comms. I am not sure, and maybe the Taoiseach will confirm the details, but I think the company gets €5 million or even €7 million per year for the contract. All of the equipment is provided directly by the Oireachtas and all the paperwork is done by the Oireachtas, so the only overhead that we can see for the company is to pay the workforce, who are on miserable earnings and have very few hours. There are five permanent workers but the majority of them are living in poverty. Given the role they play in projecting out the democracy of this country and the importance of that, they should have decent jobs and proper retainers and should not have to live in poverty in this precarious existence.

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