Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

Section 2 deals with the cuts we will impose on public sector workers. I appeal to the Minister of State that it is not about making savings in the public sector. Sinn Féin has never argued for cuts of €1.3 billion. I urge the Minister of State to amend this section accordingly. Sinn Féin does not believe that €1.3 billion of savings should be made in the public sector. We disagree with Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party. Sinn Féin believes the €1.3 billion in savings should be made elsewhere. Some should be made in the public sector by reducing salaries but not by taking entire salaries from people. That would be crazy. Pay levels should be reduced to €100,000 and no one in the public sector should earn more than that figure. That would save in the region of €400 million. This is not voodoo economics; these figures have been costed by the Department of Finance. If Senator Hanafin has a problem with any of these figures he has a problem with the officials in the Department of Finance who presented the figures. The figures are accurate, the figures we received in response to parliamentary questions are accurate and the work done by the departmental officials is without question.

This is about choices that have been laid before the Minister. Choices have been presented in the form of amendments to the section and we should not cloud the issue. The Government can reduce the incomes in my county of over 20,000 public sector employees or we can examine other approaches whereby we introduce other measures to close the gap. This is not about making €1.3 billion in savings in the public sector and if Senator Hanafin took me up wrong he should listen more carefully. I do not represent Fine Gael, which believes this should be done along with the Labour Party.

Sinn Féin does not believe this should be done. Sinn Féin values workers in the public sector and understands that it cannot drive down wages. There is no capacity to make those savings in the public sector unless one drives down the wages of the lowest income earners in the public sector. That is wrong and is not something we tolerate. We must find savings elsewhere in the economy, which means taxing the wealthiest in society and adopting measures submitted to the Government and costed by the Department of Finance. Whether one agrees we should take these measures, they show there are ways to make the savings in the Irish economy so that we do not have to undertake the measures about to be adopted by this legislation.