Joe O'Toole (Independent)

The House will be aware that on a number of occasions I have asked for a discussion on developments under the national partnership talks. Other colleagues, such as Senator Ross, have also asked for a debate, perhaps for different reasons. I ask the House to note, in particular, that at a time when house price inflation is running at over 10%, CEOs and directors are getting increases of more than 20% per annum in their remuneration and the economy is still growing at an unprecedented pace, IBEC can tell the people of Ireland with a straight face that it will hold workers at the economic coalface to low single figure increases in their remuneration over the next few years. It is important that public representatives, such as the Members of this House, should express their views on this grasping and greedy selfishness as articulated by IBEC.

IBEC does not want to pay the workers on the ground, nor does it want more Government spending on services. Effectively, when it talks about competitiveness what it really means is trousering the gains from the wealth created by society. It is time we told it we will not put up with this. People do not have to show their hands on this but if we want to maintain the partnership spirit and good relations in the workplace, as public representatives we should be calling for a reasonably generous deal for workers at all levels of the economy. Nobody can object to that.

In view of the line likely to be taken by Senator Ross and others, it is time we said this in the Seanad so that our position is quite clearly known. I have said it on many occasions but now is a particularly important time. As the discussions have been ongoing for a number of weeks, I remind the House that we agreed to return to this issue after Easter. The Leader has previously made opportunities available to the House to do this.