Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise an issue which has been discussed in this House before but has yet to be resolved and that is the issue of pay disparity in Leinster House. For years now, secretarial assistants have been working with their union to try to resolve the issue of unequal pay and as of yet, the Minister for Finance has not even met with them to discuss the matter directly.

The Leader's party leader, the Tánaiste, spoke publicly about how Fine Gael is in favour of a living wage and yet the largest cohort of political staff in Leinster House are not guaranteed one. There are more than 200 secretarial assistants working in Leinster House. They have a starting salary of €24,000. To put that in perspective, parliamentary assistants start on approximately €41,000, a Senator starts on more than €69,000 and Deputies make a minimum of €96,000, which is due to go up to nearly €100,000 in the next round of pay rises.

Our secretarial assistants keep the lights on, the phones answered and the letters written. They write our speeches, policy papers and legislation. They commit hours and hours of their time, outside of the working hours, to help our constituents and they work hard to get many of us, in both Houses, elected. Despite all of this, they would not even be able to pay rent in most cities in Ireland on the starting wage we give them.

I remind the Leader this ongoing issue of pay was raised a number of years ago as part of a wider cultural problem of bullying and harassment in the Oireachtas. Many strides have been made to address these issues through well-being initiatives and training for Members on how to manage staff. However, nothing has been done to address the power imbalance which comes when a secretarial assistant is learning less than one fifth of what his or her boss takes home.

The Oireachtas should be a place of equals and that starts with guaranteeing an equal standard of living for all our staff. Secretarial assistants in the Seanad and the Dáil do as many hours as parliamentary assistants and should be paid equally. They are as committed to their work as we are and they make a valuable contribution to the administration of our work. I ask the Leader of the House to write to the Minister and invite him to give us an update on this issue.

This House passed a motion by a unanimous vote in the last term to end the practice of paying secretarial assistants so little. I assume we can all agree this unfair pay disparity needs to be addressed before the end of this term, if fair is indeed fair.