Guím Nollaig shona ar an Cheann Comhairle agus ar gach duine sa Teach seo, go háirithe ar na hoifigigh a thugann tacaíocht dúinn gach lá agus uaireanta istoíche freisin. I also wish a very happy Christmas to all of the nurses, midwives and emergency staff across the State who provide us with a wonderful service. No doubt they are all reeling in horror today at the news that the bondholders are being bailed out. The Taoiseach said:

Anglo Irish is not getting another cent of our money and any bank coming looking to us for more money is going to have to show how they are going to impose losses on their junior bondholders, on their senior bondholders, and on other creditors before they come looking to us for any more money. Not another cent.

Later, when speaking at an event, ironically in Beaumont Hospital, he described the bondholders as being "At the bottom of the pile." I bet him that the nurses who voted yesterday, by a figure of 94% or 95%, to take strike action after Christmas believe they are at the bottom of his pile. As we hurtle towards Christmas, people who have worked an extra shift a month for the past ten years for nothing and who have given up pay, hours, promotion and pensions in order to bail out Anglo Irish Bank to the tune of €30 billion are sick of it. The money did not fall from the sky; somebody paid it and it happened across the public sector. The nurses are sick of it because not only does it hurt them, their families and careers, it also hurts the people whom they look after because they cannot retain and recruit the staff who are necessary. I ask the Taoiseach to please not give me an answer that nurses are on €70,000 a year because I do not know at what pay scales he is looking. I am looking at the pay scales the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, submit in its weekly magazine to its members, in which it describes exactly what it is looking for in taking strike action 24 hours at a time in the new year. Most nurses are still paid less than gardaí and teachers when they reach almost the top point of the scale after ten or 15 years. It is nothing like €70,000 and they still work. It sticks in their craw that they still have to work a shift every month for absolutely nothing, as the Taoiseach must know because members of his family are in the service. None of us in this House do that and none of the visitors in the Visitors Gallery do so; therefore, why are nurses expected to do it and why are they being left at the bottom of the pile in this way to take strike action?

The Taoiseach has just announced that the State will benefit to the tune of €600 million, but instead of giving it to the nurses to sort out their pay claim and taking them seriously instead of forcing them out onto the streets to take strike action, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, has said he will use the money to reduce the Exchequer bill even further and take more back from the money with which we bailed out the bondholders. I make the point to the Taoiseach that the general secretary of the INMO believes - she does not say this lightly - the reason it is taking strike action is they cannot get other nurses to take up jobs across the board, from general nursing and midwifery to psychiatric nursing. How does the Taoiseach go home from here and tell everyone to have a happy Christmas, except nurses, midwives and psychiatric nurses who are looking forward to having to take strike action after Christmas?

Anglo Irish Bank was not bailed out by a Fine Gael-led Government but by a Fianna Fáil-led Government. We did not give it any extra money; we did not give it a red cent. In fact, we liquidated it, or the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, as it was called at the time. At the end of the liquidation there was, unexpectedly, money left over, which now goes to the creditors, including the State. The State is getting €600 million which we will use to reduce the national debt. Ireland still has one of the highest national debts per head of capita of any country in the western world and it is appropriate that we pay down that debt in order that we will not be badly exposed if we run into trouble into the future and in order that we will never have to get back again to pay cuts or tax increases, as occurred during the recession.

I am aware of the results of the ballots by the INMO and the Psychiatric Nurses Association, PNA. Of course, the Government regrets the decision taken, but it represents the depth of feeling among nurses and midwives about their pay and conditions. We understand this and hear it and I have no doubt about their willingness to strike if it is not possible to come to an agreement before then. However, we have a pay deal, not just with nurses and midwives but with all public servants. That pay deal runs until 2020 and the Government will honour it. It provides for pay increases for all public servants in 2019 and, in some cases, multiple pay increases. There is an extra increase for those earning under €30,000, an extra increase in March for new entrants recruited after 2012, increments for most staff and pay restoration for those earning more than €40,000. Pay restoration for those earning under €40,000 has already occurred. This is well deserved because public servants across the country work extremely hard.

As the Deputy said, average nursing salaries in Ireland, including pay and allowances, are not €70,000. They are just over €50,000-----

That is what the Taoiseach said a few weeks ago.

-----but it is well deserved and they work very hard for it. They are very professional. It is, however, less than the figure for gardaí, for whom the average salary is about €70,000. We have a real difficulty with the current pay claim and need to be honest and upfront with the country about it. The claim is for a 12% increase in pay, parity with physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. It would cost about €300 million to deliver. Understandably, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists would not accept this and there would be a series of knock-on claims across the public service. We estimate that they could cost €600 million or €900 million and it would not be once off but recurring every year. Over the course of four or five years the cost to the taxpayer could be €4 billion or €5 billion and we just do not have that kind of money.

We do.

We would have to borrow it. When we start to borrow money to fund pay increases, we go back to where we were before. We do not want to make those mistakes again.

I want to correct the record. When Fine Gael took office, it was on the promise of burning bondholders, but it capitulated when the European Central Bank, ECB, made a threat that a financial bomb would go off in Dublin. The Government then pulled back from its position. Not only did Fine Gael impose austerity but it also escalated it. In recent years many people have suffered from it but particularly public sector workers. The Taoiseach has just given us the figure of €300 million as being the cost. Ironically, it almost mirrors the amount of money the junior bondholders are about to be paid. The figure is €367 million versus €300 million and we will get back €600 million. We could settle with the nurses, but making a bland statement that physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists would not accept it is just bizarre. The Taoiseach is not the negotiator and cannot make that statement in a bland way. The Government needs to sort out the problem, not just because it is a problem in the lives of the nurses and their families but also because it is a problem for every citizen who has to use the health service, given that we cannot recruit and retain nurses. Children also cannot avail of the psychiatric service because, as the PNA will tell the Taoiseach, it is haemorrhaging psychiatric nurses who are leaving the State because they can do better elsewhere.

This has to be sorted, and sooner or later the Taoiseach will have to face up to it. He should not tell me he will sort it after he forces nurses out onto the streets in the month of January when the health service is creaking at its worst in terms of the crisis.

The Deputy is offering a false and bogus solution, and that is wrong. It is disrespectful to nurses and midwives to offer a false and bogus solution.

The Taoiseach is offering nothing.

A pay rise is not just one-off. A pay rise is recurring and has to happen every year. The Deputy is suggesting is to settle it this year but then take the money back off them next year. That would be wrong.

I did not say it should be taken back next year.

It would not just be a case of settling this claim. There would certainly be knock-on claims. We had that indication already from other unions. The Deputy's policies are so obviously a return to austerity. She does not want us to pay down our debts. She wants us to borrow more money-----

They are not our debts. They are Anglo Irish Bank's debts.

-----to finance pay increases. It was those kind of mistakes that caused the situation seven or eight years ago in which people could not even imagine the possibility of pay rises and we were talking about pay cuts.

The Taoiseach should stop digging. He sounds ridiculous.

The kinds of policies the Deputy pursues, namely, increasing debt and financing pay increases through borrowed money, are exactly the types of policies that land us in austerity.