Wednesday 4th February 2009

I will begin with the closing point of the Minister of State. We need an election because the current Government has no mandate for what it is doing. The notion that any democrat would regard seeking the view of the people and the endorsement of the people for such a policy platform as some sort of diversion is somebody who does not understand the meaning of a democratic mandate. We are in a catastrophic economic situation. Everybody in this House knows that and the people know it.

The Government wants to couch our economic catastrophe in some sort of world vision that it is not our own doing or the doings of this Government, but that somehow it is somebody else’s fault. However, largely our problems have been caused by a Government that changed an export-driven, job-focused economy in 2001 into a speculation economy, driven by speculation in land and property prices, coaxed on by the friends of Fianna Fáil and allowing windfall profits of unimaginable sums to be given to some small cohort of individuals in the State.

The economic commentariat, who were among the cheerleaders for that economic policy of property speculation, have managed in the last short while to switch the focus away from those who caused our economic woes onto those who certainly did not and that is the public sector who are in no way responsible for our economic situation. There is palpable anger among all public servants who are enraged not only at the scale of the financial imposition upon them but also by the way their service has been devalued and dismissed. They are being characterised by some as, “drones dragging down our economy” and it is a disgrace that this would be the case. The divisions being stoked between public and private workers is a hornet’s nest that will do great damage to the country.

In the minute or two of my time I want to talk, not about the economic plan presented to us, because we have no economic plan, but about the levy which is not, as has been characterised, a pensions levy but rather a pay levy on one sector of the economy, the public sector. I have spoken to dozens of people today. Some are really dismayed. A part-time cleaner in the public service earning €17,000 a year will be required to pay €510, one and a half week’s wages, out of her miserable wage.

That is not fair, not equitable and not acceptable. The levy is not pension-related. Gross income is to be tabulated into the levy. Overtime, premium payments, payments that are not calculated for pension purposes, should not therefore be encompassed by the levy.

The Minister for Defence was unable to answer a simple question at Question Time as to whether, for example, overseas military service allowance was to be included. Will the allowance paid to our soldiers in Chad be included? The Minister for Defence does not know. That is how well thought out this income levy dressed up as a pensions levy is. It is a crude and unfair system. It is clear, however, that the public pay bill must be addressed. It can be addressed in a fair way but the Government has not gone about doing it in this measure.

In the time remaining I want to deal with one other issue, that is, the assault on overseas development aid. I say this as someone who worked for some time in a voluntary capacity in Africa . It is dishonourable that solemn commitments twice given to increase our overseas development aid budget incrementally over time are to be among the first casualties. The poorest of the poor, those who literally cannot feed themselves, are to be casualties of the cuts. That is reprehensible and disgraceful.

I ask the Government to forge a consensus of social solidarity to address in an effective way the serious problems that face us. The Labour Party will assist in this, but the division of society between public and private workers and the characterisation of some as drones will be a disastrous way to set about it. That is what has happened on the part of the Government to date.