Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Alex White, to the House. First, I will address some of the comments made by Senator Thomas Byrne. I find his comments somewhat incredulous. I think he is suffering from some form of schizophrenia. He must think we are all suffering from some form of collective amnesia. Let me remind him that in 2009 and 2010, cuts to pensions amounted to €1.35 billion and in 2010 there was a reduction of €1 billion in remuneration. I am sure that every single public servant in the country is well aware of that fact. On the other hand, we are supposed to believe the Fianna Fáil Party has had some type of Pauline conversion, acknowledge it is mea culpa and has learned from the error of its ways. Again I do not think there is a public servant in the country who will swallow that.

Senator Byrne mentioned our failure in regard to the Croke Park II agreement. One of the difficulties we had in negotiating that agreement, as he well knows, is the fact that previous Governments failed to deal with low paid workers' core pay and instead of doing that they hid behind spurious increments and payments such as twilight hours payments and so forth.