Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Máire Hoctor, to the House. I will not get involved in a debate about who is to blame for all this. We are where we are and we need to find a solution to the problem.

The Government's action, standing alone and unchanged, is unacceptable. I received a telephone call yesterday from a nurse who is married to a teacher. She told me their salaries, which are not important because we can work those out. They are both being hit for the 1% levy and the pension levy which is fair enough. Her husband, however, is one of two siblings. His mother, who receives a small pension, is in a nursing home for which he and his sister must each pay €700 a month. The Government has now decided that from next January, that will only attract a 20% tax rebate whereas it was 40% previously. That is appalling. It means that the young couple are more than €1,000 worse off per month in net terms. That couple are struggling now.

I received a letter this morning from another person. She stated:

It is my belief that we must all make sacrifices to pull the country out of this difficult time, but we need to target it as well ... I also feel that the way in which the levy has been calculated is most unfair, and that somebody on a salary seven times more than myself will pay only 1.9% extra...We are just a young couple trying to get by, like so many of our colleagues. We have never enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle. For example, when we finally made it onto the property ladder, we could only afford a place 35 miles away from work. This is far from ideal, when we both have to drive because of our jobs. My husband and I were already wondering how we would ever be able to afford to start a family, but now the whole thing seems impossible. This really does not seem right in a country whose Constitution promises to protect the family.

As politicians, we are used to getting people on the other end of the phone, spraying abuse in all directions. However, the people getting on to me recently have been on the verge of tears. A nurse told me that she was working with a consultant who is earning somewhere between €400,000 and €500,000 per year. She and her husband are being asked to pay about 10% of their salaries, but he is only being asked to pay 2% more on the levy. There is something wrong with that. There surely must be a point above a figure of €70,000 or €80,000 where people in the public and private sectors pay more.

A person rang me who has a menial job in the public sector. He is earning €25,000 per year. He has been hit for all these pension contributions. He told me that if he was paying his ordinary stamp in the private sector, he would get a pension of €250 per week, which equates to €12,000 per year and which is exactly what he would get in the public sector under the so-called defined benefit pension. Where is the equity in that? Surely these are anomalies.

When everything was supposed to be bad last year, Irish developers put €1.8 billion into the Cape Verde islands — the same amount the Government is looking for at the moment — yet these developers are not being asked to contribute. Let us get fairness and equity into this. It is fine to hit people like me and everyone in this House. However, the people below us should not be included. There is so much we need to do to get this right.

Prices have dropped in the past six months in places where there seemed to be no change in wages or whatever. Prices dropped by 20%, 30% and even 50%. How did those businesses manage to do that and still stay profitable? The answer is that they were greedy and making profits for the last few years. Ministers had been saying that, but no one is saying that we should go back to those people and make them contribute. They caused much of the inflation and many of the problems. They should surely be included. If this is going to be a national initiative, then we must ensure the public sector makes its contribution, but workers from the public sector should not be picking up the tab on their own for what has gone wrong in the economy.

Benchmarking cost the State €900 million, and we are still talking about it. We now intend to take twice that amount out of the public sector, following the announcement yesterday, and we will take twice that again next year and the year after. We need to bring a bit of scale to what we are doing here. We have much work to do to get balance into things. What we have seen in Greece, Iceland, and France is beginning here with the Waterford Glass workers and the students. People are going to feel completely disengaged and disconnected. We need to make sure this is shared by everyone. Let us forget about whose fault this is. Let us claw our way out of it. We must move forward together as a country with everyone involved and paying their share while recognising that some people cannot do so.

The Waterford Glass workers surely should have their pension protected. I do not mind paying into a fund that would do that.