Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The position I am quite clearly stating is that people earning under €30,000 have had their pay restored and it is now 4% above the 2009 pay level. That has not occurred in other sectors of the HSE. This is point No. 1.

My second point is that an additional 13,000 whole-time equivalent, WTE, staff were taken on in the HSE in the last four years in order to assist and make sure we can continue to deliver the same level of care or an increased level of care. There are now 135,000 people working in the HSE. There were 103,000 WTE workers and that has now gone up to 116,000 whole-time equivalent staff in four years, which is a huge pay cost of some €600 million per annum of additional cost. With regard to the situation we are discussing, yes an evaluation was carried out and yes it needs to be implemented, and the Government is quite clearly saying it will start to implement it from November. There are other issues that need to be resolved and the Government is quite prepared to go back into conciliation on those issues and has made its position quite clear. Let us not go back to the period between 2000 and 2008 when public sector pay went from €8 billion per annum to €16 billion per annum and then-----