Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In light of the Labour Court proposals on Garda pay, the ongoing and welcome negotiations between the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, ASTI, and the Department of Education and Skills and the serious threat of industrial action that remains there, the impending action by our nurses and midwives, the anger of our public health workers, in particular, and Jack O'Connor's comments on radio the other day - I am a member of SIPTU, one of the architects of the Lansdowne Road agreement - when he said that agreement is dead, let us be clear, all of us in this Chamber know that this is the case.We know the situation has moved on. We also know the Government is sleepwalking its way into further industrial relations chaos unless the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform does what he needs to do, as Mr. O'Connor spelt out, which is to confirm that the successor to the Lansdowne Road agreement needs to be negotiated and to give a firm and clear start date for those negotiations. The negotiations should start immediately after Christmas. Fine Gael is just not very good at industrial relations. Consistently, the party leaves things until the last moment or beyond and yet again, we have a silence from the Minister on this issue. What is worse is that he is saying the Lansdowne Road agreement is fine when all of us know it is not fine, times have moved on and the just grievances of public sector workers need to be addressed.

We are calling clearly for a successor agreement with negotiations to begin as soon as possible. Key principles should come into play in the negotiations such as equal pay for equal work. It is shocking that the Government will not commit to that simple principle, which all of us know is correct. It is not right that new entrants to the Garda and the teaching profession are paid less than their colleagues, yet the Government will not come out clearly and say that and, more important, outline a timeline in respect of when those changes will happen. The FEMPI legislation needs to be unwound and there must be pay equalisation for post-2011 entrants. The public sector must become a living wage employer. It would not cost much to make that change and it would send a powerful statement in terms of a principled stance by our Government. Again, we have heard nothing to date. Pay increases are needed for low to middle income workers because simply unwinding FEMPI on a blanket basis will reward those at the top more than they deserve without giving decent pay increases to those at the bottom.

The principles we espouse are pay justice, equality, restoration and recognition for the Garda and the Defence Forces. I call on the Acting Leader to bring the Minister to the House to debate these issues.