Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. It is my first time to be in the House with him since his elevation to ministerial office. We served together on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and I am delighted to see him in his current position. I am delighted for him. Well done.

If I wanted to have a trade union representative, I suppose I could look to Senator Craughwell who referred to those who lost their seats last year. I was one of those unfortunate Senators who lost their seats in the middle of a pandemic and, as the Senator has mentioned, I was not entitled to anything because I paid class K PRSI. As I said to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, in the Seanad four or five years ago when he was the Minister for Social Protection, this class of PRSI is a supertax on public service. If that is what we want it to be, we should say that. We should not call it pay related social insurance if we are to pay it at a rate of 4% only to find there is nothing available to us when we go looking for it. I knew there was no point in looking for anything but, about a year into it, I decided to look into it and found that class K PRSI contributors are not eligible for the pandemic unemployment payment, an eye test or dental benefit. We are eligible for nothing. If the system wants everybody in this House and judges to pay 4% for nothing, we should call it a supertax on politicians and judges. There may not be public sympathy for us; so be it. This, however, goes back to an era when politicians probably had many other sources of income. They ran businesses or had other professions. Many people in this House are at it pretty much full-time. They do not necessarily have other sources of income. If that is the case, let us not pretend this 4% deduction is for social insurance.

To go back to the Bill about which we are actually talking, the Public Service Pay Bill 2020, as someone who had four grandparents who were public servants at various stages of their careers, civil servants, gardaí, teachers and so on, and two parents who also worked in the public service, I am very understanding of what happened during the period of FEMPI with regard to both pay and pensions. As a councillor, I paid class K PRSI. This used to be paid at 0%. One paid nothing and got nothing. It then became 4% but one still got nothing. This Bill, however, is a welcome development, particularly as it relates to Sláintecare and hospital care.The idea now that consultants who are paid by the system must work exclusively for the system is a positive and let us see how Sláintecare works out. There is a big body of work to be done. I wish the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and all of the team involved with it the very best.

I am not going to rehash everything that the Minister of State has said in his very comprehensive opening statement, but I will point out that the deal is there to implement Building Momentum and is very welcome more than ten years on from FEMPI. I remember being at a meeting at which the Taoiseach of the time, Brian Cowen, outlined that public spending was approximately €60 billion per year, of which €20 billion was being spent on social welfare, including children's allowance, pensions and the wider social welfare, and another €20 billion was being spent on public sector pay and pensions. His point was that if the Government were to make cuts to the remaining €20 billion, it would be sending local authority workers out with no materials to use - nothing to cut the grass with, nothing to put in their lawnmowers, nothing to fill the roads with and nothing to use to fix the traffic lights. It was a very painful time but, it is good and very welcome to see FEMPI being wound down. It will be gone in the very near future. This Bill allows the Minister to do certain things. It was very sensibly said at the time in the FEMPI legislation that no more could be done. It has been very restrictive in what it has done.

I would like the Minister of State to reflect on a matter that he will not be able to deal with today. There has been a very welcome increase in councillors' pay in the last month or so, but councillors are the only people in the entire public service who are not entitled to a pension. All of the 949 local authority members are in the public service and work hard. They pay taxes, the universal social charge, PAYE and PRSI but at the end of it all they have no pension. A part-time person in a very lowly paid State job is entitled to a pension. It will not be a very valuable pension because he or she will not be paid very much but it is a pension. In many cases, councillors with long service have given up career opportunities and other opportunities to work very diligently on behalf of their local communities. Therefore, I ask that the Government considers giving councillors a pension sooner rather than later. It would not be a very expensive pension for the State to fund because councillors' pay, albeit with an increase, is still very close to the bottom of the pile in terms of what people in the public service are paid.

The wider public needs to appreciate where their taxes go. It goes into gardaí, teachers, nurses, local authority workers and everybody in the wider public service, including the health service. All of the people on whom we rely every day for everything we need, in many cases, are in the public service and that is why we need to tax people. Of course multinationals need to pay their way, but if they funnel revenue through Ireland with no property in Ireland and no revenue being generated here, it may not be us they need to pay. I refer to the famous Apple row, in which there was not necessarily any reason we should collect the money. I am certainly in favour of the idea that stateless companies and companies that can hide their revenue from the whole world are taxed. Clearly, Ireland produces and generates much revenue for these companies through its employees in this country providing services for the worldwide users of their services.

I wish to reflect on an ongoing row that is simmering away for the secretarial assistants of many of the Members of this House and the Lower House. Technically, secretarial assistants work for the State and for the Members but they are not officially civil servants. The Minister of State is aware of this very long-standing issue and I would like him to address it in his concluding remarks, if he can.

It is positive that we have partnership with the unions and the public service. There has been agreement right back to the era of Charlie Haughey on various things. Back in the 1980s it was much better to work together than to have divisive rows about various terms and conditions. It is very positive that we have the Public Sector Pay Bill 202. I wish the Minister well in its implementation. Equally, I wish the Minister for Health, who will benefit most from Sláintecare, the very best in that implementation. I commend this Bill to the House.