Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the Labour Party group, I welcome the Lithuanian ambassador to the House. I am surprised to see Senators going at each other in the Chamber. It is not particularly helpful. The vitriol is better left outside the Chamber rather than having it in here. However, I want to put on the record that I have also spoken to people and I believe what they have told me. I see no reason not to believe what they have told me. I want to put this very firmly on the record. I believe Together for Safety and I believe the testimony they have given me.

Will the Acting Leader write to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, and ask him for an update on the secretarial assistant pay issue? When the Minister was in the House last year he told us he would take a recommendation from the commission on the very valid pay claim of secretarial assistants. We all stood in support of this. I understand such a recommendation has been made. I also understand that SIPTU worker representatives are progressing through a lengthy and at times frustrating industrial relations process. This process is something they should not have to go through. They would not need to go through it if the Minister simply adopted the recommendations of the commission. Will the acting leader write to the Minister and ask him whether he has received this recommendation and whether he will implement a policy of equal pay for equal work as he committed to in this House?

It is no secret the Labour Party has long been banging the drum for flexible work. There is a clear appetite among the public for it. It would be remiss of me not to mention flexibility with regard to the higher and further education sector and learning opportunities and reflect on some of the concerns students have raised with me, particularly disabled students. They are concerned about the inherent ableism in the system and how, over the past two years, we managed to find a way to facilitate students, namely, by remote and flexible learning. Many disabled students benefited from remote learning during lockdown. How will we learn from the past two years about how we can include students in learning settings? Of course there needs to be more training for this, and for it to be a permanent option there need to be more teachers and more equipment. I know staff in the sector are already overworked and underpaid. However, we cannot allow this to be an excuse to return to excluding disabled students, parents or carers from accessing education. The onus has to be on the Minister to ensure funding and resourcing are in place for remote or hybrid learning. Otherwise we will simply have given students a taste of how things could be for them but have decided it is too much bother to facilitate them. That is not good enough.

I was not planning on raising this issue but I want to say when I was on the bus into work this morning there was a kerfuffle over a passenger not wearing a mask. The ethics and morality of the debate aside, and I will not go into those, the abuse that was landed on the bus driver was unbelievable. I could not believe it. There was shouting and roaring. The person was so aggressive, laughing and shoving a phone into the bus driver's face. In the end, the bus driver could not go on driving. We all had to get off the bus and the Garda was called. It was absolutely disgusting how the person spoke to the bus driver. It was rotten. It was really nasty behaviour. No person out working should have to experience it. Solidarity with the workers who are facing this abuse every day. Up the workers.