Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 21 November 2013
5. Deputy Joe Higgins asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if his Department has any plans to use the provisions of the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2013; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [49780/13]
Amharc ar fhreagraAny workers in the public sector, be they in semi-State companies such as the ESB or the public service, who do not immediately swallow the austerity agenda of the Government and the troika are now routinely bullied publicly by Government spokespersons and the capitalist press. The semi-State organisations are not encompassed by the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2013, but secondary teachers who are in dispute with the Government very clearly are. Has the Minister any plans to use the Act? Will he make a statement on that?
I thank the Deputy for his question. Obviously, the commercial semi-state sector has taken no pay cuts except at chief executive level consequent to all the legislation that was passed. That has caused some commentary among public servants generally.
The Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2013 was enacted on 5 June 2013. The primary purpose is to implement the proposed pay reduction for public servants earning annual salaries of €65,000 or more, and the parallel reduction in public service pensions over €32,500. These provisions have come into force.
The Act also contains a number of contingency measures to permit pay bill savings to be secured. The individual or body, which may be a line Minister or public service body, having the power to determine terms and conditions of employment may exercise that power to reduce non-core rates of pay or to increase hours worked. However, under the legislation, unions and representative associations may conclude collective agreements with their public service employers. Where a union has signed up to a collective agreement - in this case, the Haddington Road agreement - it will avoid the need for the contingency measures in the legislation to be deployed. As the Deputy knows, the vast majority of public service unions have entered into a collective agreement with their public service employers. Obviously, there is no need for the legislation to be deployed in that regard.
One union, as the Deputy knows, has declined to enter the collective agreement negotiated for the public service. It is a matter for its members to decide whether they wish to conclude a collective agreement, and the matter is shortly to be put to ballot. The legislative position is that in the absence of a collective agreement being concluded for members of that association, the Minister for Education and Skills will have to take the necessary measures to meet the targeted payroll savings in 2013 and the following years.
The reality is that the Minister uses the threat of the legislation to bully public sector workers, including nurses, teachers and local authority workers, into accepting the Haddington Road agreement against their will. In the first instance, it is quite a scandal that the Minister casts himself as a William Martin Murphy-type figure 100 years after the great Lock-out of 1913 with this type of blackmail threat.
In the event that the secondary schoolteachers organised in the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland reject the proposals or manifestations of austerity the Government is attempting to impose on them, what will be the role of the Minister and the legislation?
The Deputy has resorted to name-calling. The only time his party's philosophy was ever employed in actually running anything was in the city of Liverpool. That ended up with the authorities running out of money and sacking public sector workers across the city. This is the experience we have of the Deputy's policies being deployed.
I spoke to public sector workers and their representatives a year ago, opening the books, as all good employers would, to demonstrate the state of the public finances. I stated that in order not to have a dramatic reduction in front-line services, we needed to make further reductions on the payroll side. Public sector workers responded to that positively by democratic vote. One cannot have it both ways. The Deputy cannot herald the staff if they vote in a way with which he agrees, saying that is their democratic decision and that it must be respected, while disrespecting them if they vote in a way with which he does not agree on the basis of a belief that their vote is a result of harassment, bullying or other tactics.
For the record, not a single local authority worker was sacked by Liverpool City Council when it was under the leadership of the left.
Was it a great success?
It was very successful and built more houses and facilities for working class people than Deputy Howlin's Government will do over this five year period.
It was re-elected, was it?
In conclusion, in view of all the strictures and the Minister's lectures regarding public sector workers generally, hitting in particular low and middle income public sector workers, where is the Minister's policy left by the revelation of recent days of the sweet shops in hospitals being raided for tens of thousands of euro extra for chief executives? A huge gulf of inequality is being created between them and the workers at the coal face. Does that not make a mockery of the Minister's policy?
It does not make a mockery of it inasmuch as the policy must be implemented. I have set out to make the adjustments on the basis of targeting those who are best paid. If there are means used to circumvent that, it is something I regret. I have placed a cap on public sector pay that has been implemented across the public sector. We have gone further under the terms of the financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation and made additional reductions. Workers across the public sector, but particularly those in the Civil Service, earning more than €65,000 have made a very substantial contribution to making those deductions. We will ensure that public sector pay, as determined by Government, is implemented across the entire public sector.
