Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The amendment deals with the section on the issue of the shareholding and who owns the shareholding. The Minister has pointed out the integration. My concern is that the Minister is setting local authorities up, many of them are already in serious deficit situations, to knock-on wage claims because of the integration. To transfer people from commercial or semi-State operations into the local government system on much higher salaries than people on a similar grade within the local authority would surely give rise to a claim to be made by unions to address that particular anomaly and, therefore, could we have a knock-on wage claim as a consequence of this? That is my concern.