Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I put on record Sinn Féin’s support for the amendment. I accept what the Minister says and we are not going to oppose this Bill today and we are going to support him in getting it passed. However, Senator Higgins has identified a very important gap in terms of support for public services and how we go about setting up our public services. I will give one example. We have all been rightly happy to applaud public sector front-line workers who have literally put their lives on the line in the last few months. However, let us record in this House that some of those workers are outsourced to private companies, so the workers delivering meals in our hospitals, for example, the hospital in Galway, get paid €10.10 per hour.They are paid the minimum wage. If we are serious about changing and moving to a better normal than the one from which we have come, we must incorporate investment in public services to change that. It makes absolutely no sense to allow a model of outsourcing that condemns important workers who put their lives on the line to poverty pay as a matter of fact. If we are serious about changing politics for the future, we need to address the point Senator Higgins made on making the commitment to public service.

I was struck by what Senator Sherlock said. She expressed a concern I have also. There seems to be an ideological weakness here. Let us face it, Fine Gael has never exactly liked the public sector. Fianna Fáil did once but that was a long time ago.