Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Why have we not done that? Why have we not ensured that for the contract cleaning staff, who do an amazing job in this Parliament, day in and day out, year in and year out? Their employer group has just abandoned them. It has said it will just not bother with the most recent pay rise they were due. We can fix this by declaring this a living wage site. Why do we not do that and set a great example for other employers throughout the country? It would not even cost much money.

Getting back to the key point, secretarial assistant staff have been let down tremendously in the past three and a half years. They have optimism because of the positive comments the Minister made last week, which I welcome, but I want to hear in his response a very clear reassurance that he will give a clear mandate from his Department to the HR department in the Oireachtas to negotiate a significant pay rise for these staff without any further delays so that we see an offer on the table at the end of January that is worthwhile, recognises the skills and expertise of these people and, above all, gets rid of this ridiculous title of secretarial assistant. We need to be ambitious because if we do not get this done now, how many more years will they have to wait? Some of us naively thought it would be fixed because of the cross-party appeal that was made at the end of the previous Seanad.I have to put on record that it is extremely disappointing that the Minister has not agreed to meet with these workers. Putting that to one side, the Minister has said that he has the power to fix this. I am respectfully calling on him to just do that - to get it fixed and to give these people the respect, the income, the terms and conditions and the decency they deserve and have been denied for far too long.