David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I do not envy his job, which is a tough one, but I propose to make it a little tougher for him this evening. I will begin by dealing with the welcome elements of his speech. I welcome the fact these measures are generally weighted towards the lower paid which is the way it should be. They suffered most, proportionately, and they should be the first ones to have their concerns addressed. I also welcome the Minister's final remarks about section 12, which deals with the situation whereby, under the Ministries and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, public servants received pay increases above what is tolerable and gives the Government the capacity to retrieve those moneys. This is very welcome in a time of economic stringency.

I note the Minister spoke about the sacrifices of public servants, public service pensioners and so on. I wonder whether he considers Members of the Oireachtas to be public servants. I believe they are; they are paid from the public purse and they serve the people well. However, I did not notice anything specifically dealing with the situation of Members of these Houses. I know it is unpopular, and mine will probably be the only voice raising this issue publicly, but I am not the only person, by any means, who feels very strongly about this within the Oireachtas. The Minister's predecessor, the late Brian Lenihan, who was a thoroughly decent man, abolished with one stroke of this pen the increment for long service. In the case of a number of Members, that amounts to €10,000 per year, which is a big wallop out of one's pay packet. It also affects one's pension. It decreases one's pension from €38,000 to €32,000, which is a very substantial reduction. I urge the Government to give some consideration to restoring that increment. We are the only group in the Civil Service who do not have such an increment. We are sadistically sectioning ourselves off in order to appear good in the public eye.

I have raised the issue of allowances with the Minister on a number of previous occasions. The allowances are completely unusable. I used to send out newsletters but the postal allocation has been cut from approximately €2,000 when I entered this House to €350 per year. That only covers casual correspondence in my case. When I raised this issue previously, the Minister suggested that I use e-mail but I cannot do that because I only have 300 e-mail addresses for an electorate of 60,000. That is not going to get me very far. While the regulations do not specify that one cannot send out newsletters, they allow for spending on public relations consultants and expense account lunches and dinners. That, to my mind, reeks and should stink in the nostrils of anybody who holds public service in high regard in this country.

I have had an enormous volume of mail from people in the teaching profession and from members of An Garda Síochána. I have one letter here which asks that we amend the 2015 FEMPI Bill to remove the power from the Government to freeze salary increments. The letter writer is concerned about the freezing of salary increments but all of us in this House have had our increments abolished, even though the amount in question is piddling in terms of the national Exchequer. That said, I agree with the correspondent that the freezing of salary increments is problematic.

The Minister referred in his speech to the "emergency" which begs the question, "When is an emergency not an emergency?". The Minister, to be fair to him, said the following during the Committee Stage debate: "The bottom line is I agree with the thrust of what Deputy Healy said about pensions being a preserved property right. That has been determined by the courts.". He went on to say that to sustain the current pension contributions, there must be an emergency which needs to be certified. We all know that there has been a real emergency but the music coming from the Government at the moment is that things are getting pretty good again. In that context, I will quote from the 2015 budget speech of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan:

Our economy has been transformed. It is growing strongly across all sectors and, most importantly, is sustaining and creating jobs. The economy has recovered all of the output lost during the crisis and is bigger than ever before in our history. Ireland is forecast to be the fastest growing economy in Europe again in 2015, with my Department forecasting growth at 6.2%. This forecast has been endorsed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. My Department is forecasting growth of 4.3% in 2016 taking account of the figures endorsed by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and the full impact of today’s overall budget package. Economic growth is expected to average around 3% per annum thereafter.

That sounds pretty good to me. Of course, I know it is a political rallying cry but it does not sound like an emergency. I happen to think that there probably still is an emergency because all of these measures will be paid for from borrowed money.

Various Garda representative groups have joined together in opposing certain aspects of this Bill. They do not want, for example, the requirement to work additional hours to be continued. Both teachers and gardaí are seeking an opportunity to sit down with the Government to negotiate solutions in education and policing. It has been put to me in a recent e-mail that instead of this happening, the Government is including coercive clauses in this Bill.

Teachers are seeking to be exempted from certain burdens. In institutes of technology, for example, lecturers have 18 hours of lectures per week in addition to the research they are expected to conduct. However, assistant lecturers, their junior colleagues, have 20 hours-----